[outpostinmass2]

Boston isn’t closer to Florida than New York.

[Alberta's Child]

As others have posted here, east-west distance is more important to the NHL than north-south distance. One of the league's objectives was to get as many teams as possible playing in the same time zones and within one time zone of each other.

I understand Detroit had been clamoring for a change for a long time. As a Western Conference team located in the Eastern Time Zone, they had conference games in all four time zones, and their fans had a hard time tuning in to games out on the west coast that started at 10:00-10:30 PM (Detroit time) on television.