pplpod examines the 1993-94 NHL season as the ultimate dividing line between old-school sports landscape and the highly optimized leagues you watch today. This was the 77th regular season, but it felt like year one of a completely modern era, thanks to Gary Bettman's arrival as the new commissioner from the NBA, bringing a modernizing, heavily commercial philosophy. The league expanded to 26 teams and executed a massive geographical and structural realignment that required dismantling some of the most ingrained traditions in sport's history. Out went the deeply historical old-school conference names—the Campbell and Wales conferences—replaced with clean, easily digestible branding. The Smythe, Norris, Adams, and Patrick divisions, names practically defining league identity for de ...