AHL Rule Changes

The AHL Board of Governors voted on some changes to the rules for the 2015-16 season. The biggest changes come from the schedule for the league, and how the playoff teams will be decided. Each team will play 76 games, except for the five new teams in California. Those five teams (Bakersfield, Ontario, San Diego, San Jose, Stockton) will play 68 games. That leads to part of the new rules for playoff teams. The format is now switched back to a division format of deciding playoff teams. The playoff teams will be decided by points percentage (which is the number of points earned divided by the number of points available), due to the fact that the Pacific Division will have teams that will play differing amounts of games (five of them play 68 games, two play 76 games). Each division will have 4 playoff teams, except for an exception: the fifth-place team in the division in each conference with 8 teams (Atlantic for Eastern, Central for Western) can cross over and be the 4th team in the other division (North for Eastern, Pacific for Western) if they have a better points percentage. To read about those rules (if my explanations were confusing) and other rules changes, here is the link from the official AHL website: http://theahl.com/board-of-governors-approves-changes-for-15-16-p198633