NHL's proposed realignment

the NHL board of governors just approved a radical 4-conference alignment that could possibly begin as early as next year. this guarantees that all teams will play at minimum a home-and-home with every other team in the league. i'm glad this is coming back, as i didn't like the idea of having to wait a few years for say, the avs or red wings to make their way to madison square garden to play the rangers. ultimately, travel plans were put into consideration, and the move of the atlanta thrashers franchise to winnipeg seems to have been a considerable factor in this new realignment proposed by the league.

the nhl proposes the following conferences:

Conference "A"	Conference "B"	Conference "C"	Conference "D"
Anaheim	Chicago	Boston	Carolina
Calgary	Columbus	Buffalo	New Jersey
Colorado	Dallas	Florida	NY Islanders
Edmonton	Detroit	Montreal	NY Rangers
Los Angeles	Minnesota	Ottawa	Philly
Phoenix	Nashville	Tampa Bay	Pittsburgh
San Jose	St. Louis	Toronto	Washington
Vancouver	Winnipeg

i think for the most part, the teams out west seem to be aligned fairly well geographically, and seems to keep intact long standing rivalries, such as edmonton-calgary, calgary-vancouver, and local rivalries (LA-Anaheim). i'm bothered more by the eastern conferences. i'm fairly disappointed that the rangers do not have another original six team within the same conference. why is carolina lumped into the conference with mostly mid-atlantic teams? why are the panthers and lightning in the same conference with mostly northeast US and southeast Canadian teams? originally this was how i thought the eastern conference SHOULD look.

Eastern Conference "1"	Eastern Conference "2"
Boston	Buffalo
Montreal	Carolina
New Jersey	Florida
NY Islanders	Ottawa
NY Rangers	Pittsburgh
Philly	Tampa Bay
Toronto	Washington

in this instance, you would keep all the eastern original six teams together, and keep intact most regional rivalries except for pittsburgh-philly. pittsburgh has had a budding rivalry with washington the last few years, obviously coinciding with the emergence of crosby, malkin, and ovechkin, so i think this would kind of offset the keystone state rivalry. but this kind of makes no sense. the more i thought about it, the better the following alignment looks.

Eastern Conference "1"	Eastern Conference "2"
Boston	Buffalo
New Jersey	Carolina
NY Islanders	Florida
NY Rangers	Montreal
Philly	Ottawa
Pittsburgh	Tampa Bay
Washington	Toronto

this seems to make the most sense geographically, given the i-95 corridor in the northeast (except for pittsburgh). you get to keep the philly-pittsburgh rivalry with this alignment. rangers-bruins and montreal-toronto are classic original six matchups that would never get old. montreal, ottawa, and toronto can battle it out for eastern canada supremacy; buffalo is close enough to toronto obviously to have a regional rivalry there. and then you have carolina, tampa bay, and florida battling it out in the southeastern part of the US. it's true that the second eastern conference seems to have two separate pods of activity, but it's kind of hard to do the eastern conference teams without breaking up existing rivalries. what do you think of the proposed alignment by the NHL?