Structure
The League consisted of two divisions: the older Eastern Division (later the Eastern and Central Divisions) consists of seven teams based in Ontario and Québec, while the Western Division was formed in 2002 with the addition of the Calgary Oval X-Treme, Edmonton Chimos, and the Vancouver Griffins. The Griffins only lasted one season, and the high travel costs for the two Alberta teams caused them to break away in 2004 and form the Western Women's Hockey League.
The two leagues agreed to merge in 2006, however this merger broke down midseason, and the WWHL remained independent.
Due to the expected merger, the NWHL was split into the Eastern and Central divisions, with the WWHL teams expected to make up the Western Division. The Eastern and Central Division teams played a 35-game unbalanced but interlocking schedule, with the four teams from the Central Division and the top two teams from the Eastern Division qualifying for the postseason. In the NWHL playoffs, teams played a best-of-three series to determine the Eastern and Central Division champions, who face off for the championship.
Teams from the Eastern and Central Divisions did not play against the Western Division teams at all in the regular season or postseason, although there were plans to have all three divisions compete in the playoffs before the league folded.
Read more about this topic: National Women's Hockey League
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“It is difficult even to choose the adjective
For this blank cold, this sadness without cause.
The great structure has become a minor house.
No turban walks across the lessened floors.
The greenhouse never so badly needed paint.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“Just as a new scientific discovery manifests something that was already latent in the order of nature, and at the same time is logically related to the total structure of the existing science, so the new poem manifests something that was already latent in the order of words.”
—Northrop Frye (b. 1912)
“The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in its totality, in its structure: posterity discovers it in the stones with which he built and with which other structures are subsequently built that are frequently better—and so, in the fact that that structure can be demolished and yet still possess value as material.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)