After a dormant night in the NHL’s Eastern Division, all eight teams are in action Tuesday evening, including the Penguins hosting the New York Rangers at 6 p.m.

I was a bit skeptical of how the makeshift 2021 NHL format of entirely intra-divisional play would work out. We’re about 45% through this season so far, and — I must admit — it’s been more entertaining than I expected.

Tracking the Eastern Division as a singular entity has been kinda fun. It’s akin to how I consume NFL games, stats, standings, highlights and information from the AFC North when the Steelers are in season.

I love it when nights such as Tuesday occur with all eight teams are on the ice. I tend to track the regular season results with a level of interest mirroring a typical Eastern Conference playoff bracket. And the college hockey-style two-game sets are enjoyable to watch as snack-sized playoff appetizers.

The NHL has done as good of a job as possible, given the coronavirus parameters and the border difficulties for the Canadian teams.

Would I want a permanent geographical realignment such as this when we return to an 82-game schedule next year? No.

I want to see teams from across the divisional boundaries. I want to see Nathan MacKinnon and the Colorado Avalanche. Bring back Marc-Andre Fleury and the Vegas Golden Knights or Patrick Hornqvist and the Florida Panthers.

Give me a weekend series with the Tampa Bay Lightning or a few firewagon games with the Toronto Maple Leafs and Edmonton Oilers.

There are only so many games with the three New York metro-area teams that one person can stand!

The other reason I don’t want this format to be permanent is the playoffs. I think as we get close to the end of the season, we are going to hear some squawking about who is left out from “Division X” which is perceived to be a “stronger” group than “Division Y.”

With no out-of-division games and loser points handed out for overtime results, it’s hard to gauge whether any of the four divisions is dramatically better than any of the others. The NHL is not going to generate a division as lopsidedly bad as this year’s NFC East, for example.

We’re going to have to rely on the eyeball test to rank the strengths of the divisions. Or we need to go to a potentially flawed stat like goal differential to be a guide.

Eyeballs in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia may tell you something different than eyeballs in Montreal and Edmonton.

Or Miami and Chicago. Or Minnesota and Colorado.

Everyone is going to be predisposed to assume their team’s own division is the toughest — and their bubble playoff team would be more deserving of a place in a top-4 seeded playoff bracket than the third or fourth team in another division.

That exercise is particularly difficult to forecast right now when you have teams such as Vegas, New Jersey and Dallas. None of them has played more than 22 games yet.

But let’s play along and entertain ourselves anyway. As of the start of play Tuesday night, the Penguins and Bruins are the third and fourth teams in with 29 points apiece. But the Flyers are just two points back with two fewer games played.

In terms of points percentage, though, the Bruins are currently third (65.9%), the Flyers are fourth (61.4%) and the Penguins would be out (60.4%). And points percentage will be what counts if teams end the season with an inconsistent total of games played.

Now, for the sake of comparison, let’s ditch the West since many of their teams have played very few games and the Penguins wouldn’t be conventionally lumped in with any of them anyway.

Entering play Monday night, if you had taken the Penguins and their 60.4% points rate, that would’ve been good for fourth in the Central and good for fourth in the Canadian Division.

If the season ended today — and you never know in 2021, it just might — the complaints in Pittsburgh would last until training camp next summer.

But if we were to go back to the dark ages of 2019 and use the usual Eastern Conference eight-team playoff bracket, the Pens would still be out based on points percentage.

Again — as of the start of play Monday — Tampa would have been the No. 1 seed as the Atlantic Division champion at 78.3%. The Islanders would have been the No. 2 seed as champs of the Metro at 68.0%.

Then the rest of the conference playoff seeds would’ve looked like this:

3. Toronto 73.1%

4. Carolina 72.9%

5. Florida 70.8%

6. Washington 66.7%

7. Boston 65.9%

8. Philadelphia 61.4%

——-

9. Montreal 60.9 %

10. Pittsburgh 60.4%

I guess you’ll have to let your conscience be your guide when you choose to affix whatever standard you want for “fairness” by comparison.

Yes, the Central has four teams who came out of the weekend with less than 50% of their points earned — Columbus (48.1%), Dallas (47.5%), Nashville (44%) and Detroit (32.7%).

The top four teams in that division should be able to beat them up, and that bloats their percentages that way.

But the East has the New Jersey Devils (42.9%) and Buffalo Sabres (32.6%). Thankfully, the Penguins have yet to play either of those two teams and may be able to do the same thing 16 times over the last 32 games and make all of this a moot point.

They’ll have their first chance to do so Thursday in Buffalo.

Brian Metzer of the Penguins Radio Network joins me for today’s “Breakfast With Benz” hockey podcast. We talk about the NHL divisional format, the Penguins’ place in it, and their state of affairs heading into a new week of games.

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