Tonight, the Blackhawks play their first game 6 days. Typically, a team would welcome such a layoff to get healthy, tweak a couple things, and just relax, but with this being an Olympic year, the NHL is scrambling to cram in games.
The Hawks are the biggest victim of this cramming. They will play back to back games 19 times this season, including a game tonight in Phoenix and a game tomorrow in Colorado. No team in the NHL has this many back to backs.
How can the NHL justify this? They couldn't find one team to face the Hawks within the past six days? Even one less back to backer could make a huge difference.
Here's another example of this league's incompetence. The Hawks last game was a victory against the Montreal Canadiens, one of the league's Original Six.
Original Six games have been rivalries for 80 seasons but the NHL, in it's infinite wisdom, decided to focus on developing new rivalries between division teams. That means there is no guarantee that the United Center fans will have a chance to see the Original 6 Eastern Conference opponent every year. No wonder this league is floundering.
Here is how the schedule breaks down:
Each team plays against the teams in its division three times at home and three times on the road, for a total of 24 games. Each team will continue to play 40 games inside its conference but outside its division (10 opponents) twice at home and twice on the road. That brings the in-conference total to 64 games and maintains the integrity of a Conference-based playoff system.
The remaining 18 games in the 82-game schedule will involve each team playing each team in the other conference at least once, home or away, with the three remaining games being devoted to interconference "at-large" scheduling.
This is a slight improvement over the old way, where the rivals may not have played each other AT ALL during the season, but the Boston Bruins, Toronto Maple Leafs, New York Rangers and Montreal Canadiens need to be in the building every season, and the Hawks need to be there every season.
The NHL needs to learn that teams like Nashville, Columbus, and Atlanta will never have the impact like the Original Six rivals. It doesn't matter how nasty a series gets. The old time rivals will still be the biggest draw, and the biggest story.
NOTE: This post was edited after I posted outdated infomation. I apologize for the oversight, and thank those who pointed it out to me.
Filed under: Blackhawks, Chicago Sports, danny mac show, hockey, NHL, sports
Tags: blackhawks, canadiens, chicago sports, danny mac show, NHL, original six, wscr
In all honesty why isn't the NHL having every team play each other at least twice? Yeah, I get the fact that you get a game with the Thrashers or Hurricanes that just doesn't have the same draw but then you would also welcome the likes of Ovechkin, Crosby, and all Original-6 teams to the United Center at least once.
Check your facts, you're over a year out of date - the league used to schedule 8 intra-division games, but they reduced that last season to 6, in order to increase inter-conference games. Every team now plays every other team at least once. Take a look at http://ducks.nhl.com/club/news.htm?id=469166 for the full details.
@steve Thank you. I requested the scheduling info from the NHL office, and this is what they sent me. Not an excuse. Thanks for pointing it out.