The Nonsensical NHL Schedule
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by user Alex Holowczak
As a fan of the Detroit Red Wings, the period leading up to this Christmas was very hard to follow.
In an 11 day period, between December 18 and 28, the Wings played Division rivals Columbus Blue Jackets and fellow Western Conference team the Minnesota Wild. They played each three times, and played no other team in that period.
I kept seeing the same teams and thought, "Oh, I know that result. Funny, it said something different yesterday." You couldn't tell if it was a different game when you just look at results services.
Also, with the current schedule format, there is barely any Interconference play.
There are 8 games against each division opponent, 4 against conference opponents, and 10 for Interconference. So, for example, Detroit will play in Washington once every three years.
This is a stupid idea. Even if players have to travel further, with 30 teams, and 82 games, there should be plenty of scope for playing everyone at least once.
If they had 6 division games, and 4 conference games, that would leave 18 games for Interconference. If they play each Interconference team once, that would leave 3 games. They can then play one team in each division that finished in the same position as them last year within that division, in the other arena than the first game between the two sides was played. That sums to 82, and it means that fans get to see every team more often.
Also, the schedule needs to be more random. You can't have the same teams playing each other day after day. It's not like in MLB where this is pretty much forced. There is no reason to have to play so many teams in such a short space of time.
Is this a big issue in the NHL? And is something going to be done about it?
