The Alaska Aces will play in a five-team West Division next hockey season, when its division rivals will include three traditional opponents – the Idaho Steelheads, Utah Grizzlies and Colorado Eagles – and an ECHL newcomer in the Rapid City Rush of South Dakota.
The Western Conference in 2015-16 will consist of three divisions with a total of 14 teams. The Eastern Conference will have an equal number of divisions and teams.
Eight teams from each conference will qualify for the Kelly Cup playoffs. Divisional champions will merit the Nos. 1-3 seeds and the teams with the next five highest point totals in each conference will also make the postseason.
The ECHL on Tuesday announced that playoff structure and realignment, which is largely in response to last week's news that three current California locations in the league will next season move up to the American Hockey League, one step below the NHL.
While the ECHL lost franchises in Bakersfield, Stockton and Ontario to the AHL, those franchises will be relocated east – to Norfolk, Virginia, Glens Falls, New York, and Manchester, New Hampshire, respectively – to keep the league at its current 28 teams.
Idaho, Utah and Colorado are familiar Aces' opponents, and their respective locations -- Boise, Salt Lake City and Loveland, near Denver -- are easy destinations to reach by plane. Rapid City is one of seven former Central Hockey League teams that moved into the ECHL this season. Road trips there would likely entail games against Colorado in Loveland, north of Denver, then traveling the 350-odd miles to Rapid City by bus, according to Aces managing member Terry Parks.
Parks, who sits on the league's seven-person scheduling committee, said next season's schedule is currently being assembled. Teams will continue to play a 72-game regular season split between 36 home games and 36 road games, Park said.
He said the scheduling committee aims to have a preliminary draft of the 2015-16 schedule to teams by the first week in March.
Parks said the Aces next season will play 48 of their 72 matches inside the Western Conference, with an aim at having all 48 within the West Division as part of a balanced schedule in the division. That would mean 12 games each against Idaho, Utah, Colorado and Rapid City.
That scenario would leave the Aces with 24 out-of-conference games. Parks said those will likely be split between home and the road. He believes it is likely four teams from the Eastern Conference will each make road trips that include three games at Sullivan Arena in Anchorage. Parks said he expects the Aces will cover all their road games in the Eastern Conference in one long trip at season's end.
A long, game-filled road trip to end the regular season, or near the end of the regular season, is not unusual in the Aces' 12 seasons on the circuit.
The Aces this season are scheduled to make a 10-game trip to California, Idaho and Utah in late February and early March. Last season, they played their last 10 regular-season games on the road, though that was split into two trips. And in 2012, they played their final nine games on one trip.
Reach Doyle Woody at dwoody@alaskadispatch.com, check out his blog at adn.com/hockey-blog and follow him on Twitter at @JaromirBlagr