The NHL has too many teams and no one outside of a few U.S. cities actually cares. So I propose that the NHL contract down to 16 teams, two conferences, each conference with two 4 team divisions. Play each team in your division 8 times (24 games), each team in your conference 6 times (24 games), and each team in the other conference 4 times (32 games) for a total season of 80 games. I would put 8 U.S. cities in one conference and 8 Canadien cities in the other conference to sort of add a little spice and build up rivalries. This would be my division breakdown
Canada East
Toronto
Ottawa
Montreal
Quebec
Canada West
Vancouver
Calgary
Winnipeg
Edmonton
U.S. East
Boston
Buffalo
NY Rangers
Detroit
U.S. West
Chicago
Minneapolis
Denver
L.A. (could be swapped for St. Louis)
I think this would just create a much better product with far superior games and with it being in cities that actually care about hockey financials would work out better. It puts more cities in Canada, where hockey is king, which is a plus.
I think you could probably add 1 team to each division if necessary, which would add the other of St. Louis/L.A. to the U.S. West, probably Columbus to U.S. East, Hamilton (or Kitchener) to Canada East, and Victoria to Canada West. If Victoria and Vancouver are deemed to close together there are plenty of larger cities in Ontario (Kitchener, Windsor, London, Niagara) one of which could be added to Canada West or Saskatoon or Regina could be added from the Province of Saskatchewan (though they are smaller then the ontario cities).