from John Shannon of Sportsnet,

I must admit, it may not be popular to say but, I've changed my mind on realignment and I'm on the verge of changing my mind on the Olympics.

The NHL's current proposal in front of the players for a 16-team Eastern time zone conference, and a 14 team Central, Mountain and Pacific time zone conference is creative and certainly helps issues for a few teams like Detroit, Columbus, Dallas and Winnipeg. It does, however, penalize the players and teams in the East when it comes to playoff qualifying, and hurts teams like Tampa Bay, Florida and Nashville.

Can it work? Probably. But it's not without its flaws. It's not perfect. In fact, it’s not close to perfect. Any change has to be close to perfect. But for me, that's not the issue. It would appear this is the latest contentious issue between the owners and the players. The NHL had hoped to get player support for the new proposal by last Friday and take it to the Board of Governors later this week. Instead, I'm told, The NHLPA continues to gather feedback from the membership and will have an Executive Board call at some point this week with that board deciding how they want to proceed. They still aren't sure if the players' leadership will vote on the proposal or if they want to take it to the full membership.

continued plus some Sochi talk...