A Question About the NHL 2009 October Schedule

Couple things:
a) Hockey schedules have always been a bit like this (with erratic breaks and schedules).
b) The scheduling is off because of the Olympic break so they had to get started earlier
c) Most arenas are multi-use, so they probably have routine annual stuff booked for before the hockey/basketball season starts
d) ergo, the scheduling ends up being wonky due to the multiple tenants.

But that’s just a guess.

I brought this up a day or two ago in the Clips post. I agree with all of the above, but it is still off that they have these big breaks so early. They’re wasted now, as opposed to later in the season when the players would be grateful for one.

On the other hand, if you’re not playing in the Olympics, you get this real nice two week break in February. :-)

Aren’t there so few games on Mon and Tues because somehow Versus owns those nights? I thought the idea was to schedule few games on those nights so hockey fans everywhere would be forced to watch Versus. (Though the reasoning behind this is nonsensical to me – are there so many pure hockey fans that they’ll watch Buffalo-Columbus just because it’s on, rather than do something else?)

The NHL has all sorts of scheduling issues normally, but this year the Olympics being in one of the arenas is playing havoc with the schedule even more.

Typically, the NHL asks the teams to provide 55-60 available dates for the games. For teams that don’t have an NBA team in their arena, it’s usually not too hard to come up with that. If the NHL is the primary tennant in the shared arena (such as Toronto), then they also can come up with something.

For a team like the Caps, who share the arena and are not the primary tennant, getting 55 open dates can be tricky.

Once the dates are picked, the logistics of putting visiting teams into home dates goes on. The NHL doesn’t put too many games on Monday since most teams play one or both dates of the weekend, plus before January, the NHL competes directly with the NFL. Versus has an exclusive one of the two nights, so the NHL doesn’t want to have too many games get blacked out. On top of that, there is Hockey Night in Canada. The NHL tries to have one or more eastern Canadian teams at home on Saturday. And while the NHL also tries to have a Western Canadian team at home on Saturday, that’s not always possible due to travel logistics out west, but at least one of Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver will be playing on Saturday out west.

On top of that, teams can ask for “Special Days” that they really want a game. Toronto always has a game to coincide with the Hall of Fame inductions, and the NHL usually tries to match up a team to play in Toronto with the players going in. Other games may be set based on special requests, such as having Dallas as the last opponent for the Canadiens in the Montreal Forum. Why Dallas? Because two former Habs Captains were part of the Dallas team at the time: Bob Gainey was the Dallas GM, and Guy Carbonneau was playing for Dallas.

They then come up with trips for teams to go east and west and fill in the schedule with conference and division games.

This year, there is an additional wild card, which is the Olympics. For the first time in 22 years, the Olympics is using an NHL arena (only previous time was Calgary in 1988). The Canucks play 14 straight games on the road, before and after the Olympics.

The schedule will be a little more normal next season hopefully…