Mailbag: Redrawing Club Regions, Best Statistics, NHL’s Seattle Sockeyes?

The Seattle Sockeyes could become a thing.

October 10, 2018 by Charlie Eisenhood in Opinion with 0 comments

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Q: Let’s say you’re given carte blanche to redraw regional boundaries for the college and club divisions. You want to prioritize balance and excitement, while keeping the same total number of regions and making travel reasonable. What do your maps look like?

– Pat S.

A: Since it’s the club season, I’m only going to focus on club, but remind me to do this exercise again during the college season.

First of all, here is the existing regional map:

These have been the regions since the redraw in 2012. It’s what we know. Not much to say. These regions are fine, if not spectacular. I appreciate that it uses state lines and doesn’t do weird things like the map used to do like split California in half and make San Francisco teams play Seattle during Regionals.

Now, after much consideration, here is my map:

Here are my regional redraws. I changed some names too: the regions are now called the Northwest, West, Southwest, North Central, Great Lakes, Southeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Northeast.