Kyle McGivney

PR2 – NHL Alignment• Successor function for Hill Climbing:– Two Components:

• Three Team swaps• Whole division swaps (e.g. Pick two divisions in opposite conferences

and swap all of their teams)• Take the union of the two above for state to find successors

• Simulated Annealing Iterations: 10,000• Tried each method 20 times:– Three solutions found:

• 20283.68• 20286.07• 20291.56

Solution Hill Climbing Simulated Annealing

20283.68 13 15

20286.07 7 2

20291.56 0 3

Kyle McGivney

Solutions• Unexpected results: Teams which are commonly

associated for geographical reasons are in separate conferences or divisions. e.g.

• 1. Tampa Bay and Florida• 2. Chicago and Detroit• 3. Vancouver and Calgary/Edmonton

• The second-best solution put New York and New Jersey in different divisions, although the two are the closest two teams in the NHL.

• Using a simplified distance metric may have caused North/South and East/West distance distortions.

• See map images