When the puck drops this fall there could be a drastically different look to the landscape of the American Hockey League.

A brand new divisional and conference format is one the items to be discussed and voted on by the league’s board of governors at their upcoming annual meetings in Myrtle Beach, SC.

The AHL is currently discussing about shifting from the current four division format to a broader based six division format with three divisions in each conference.

“We’ve got a couple different models that speak to six divisions of five teams and then we’ve looked at a variation on that theme,” said Pirates Managing Owner and CEO Brian Petrovek. “It all boils down to scheduling nuances.”

“I want to take a closer look around the scheduling of the five team divisions,” he said. “I kind of like that personally, but there’s going to be 30 (governors) discussing that topic so we’ll see how it plays out.”

The current format focuses more divisional play than conference, which in theory is supposed to reduce travel, but with Western Conference teams spread further apart and now with the introduction of St. John’s Newfoundland back into the league, it has made them re-think the current divisional layout.

Moving to this format will force teams to play within the conference and thus should balance out the travel within each conference as inter-conference play is expected to be eliminated.

So no more eastern teams playing the west teams and vice versa, and that’s something that Pirates ownership believes in as the best strategy for the league moving forward.

“We’ve got to be smarter about being more division heavy and conference only,” said Petrovek. “There are some teams that find it difficult to make it work, but that’s my focus and the focus of Phoenix (Pirates’ new AHL affiliate) as well.”

“We want these guys to travel reasonably, we want them to train off the ice, we want them to sleep and recover and I think the whole notion of trying to balance the (schedule) throughout the league is a non-starter financially and it simply doesn’t make sense from a player development standpoint.”

One team that was expected to move east were the Rochester Americans, but AHL President Dave Andrews said during the team’s press conference to introduce the Amerks new owner Terry Pegula that they were likely to stay in the west because of St. John’s.

Petrovek is a fan of having St. John’s in his division.

“My expectation is there will be a lot discussion about respecting geography,” he said. “I’m a big proponent of (St. John’s) being in our division. We just need to see how it works out in terms of scheduling.”

The other team that is more than likely on the move is the Charlotte Checkers, moving to the West Conference.

Petrovek indicated that it’s a situation that would take care of itself through the natural sorting out process of re-alignment and as one league executive pointed out that Charlotte would have been the West last season if it wasn’t for timing of the decision to relocate to the Queen City.

A change in conference format would more than likely require change in the playoff format on top of the one that was announced several months ago when the league announced the reduction in the number of games from 80 to 76.

A format being discussed currently among the governors is a much like one done by league in past where 10 teams per conference would make the playoffs with a best-of-three first round followed by a best-of-five and all rounds subsequently will be a best-of-seven series.

So far, it’s received mixed results.