NHL Schedule Changing Next Season

by Brad Lee on Nov 29, 2007 10:54 PM CST

By Brad Lee

According to the NHL Web site, every team will play every team at least once.

The NHL Board of Governors approved a scheduling change Thursday that will produce more inter-conference matchups, increasing the variety of teams fans can expect to see next season.

Under the new format, approved at the League meetings in Pebble Beach, Calif., and scheduled to begin in 2008-09, teams will play each club in their division six times, a total of 24 games, and the 10 other clubs in their conference four times, a total of 40 games.

The remaining 18 games in the 82-game schedule will involve each club playing all 15 clubs in the other conference at least once, home or away. The three remaining games will be devoted to inter-conference â€œat-largeâ€ scheduling.

"The sense of the board was we heard the concerns raised by some of the fans, and this was an attempt to be responsive to the concerns of our fans," NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said.
First of all Mr. Commissioner, you should have had the power to do this a year ago. So go piss up a rope. And second of all, this still means Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin and Toronto and Montreal will still only play in St. Louis once every two years...compared to once every three years under the current schedule. The league should have cut more division games or in-conference games to make a home and home series with every team.

So thanks for kind of listening and sort of fixing the problem. Next time you're in St. Louis Bettman (over/under: five years), we'll only kind of boo you.

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Comments

Bettman’s a schmuck…

With 30 teams in two conferences, there’s 15 teams to a conference, three divisions of five teams each per conference.

Once each at home and away vs. the opposite conference is 30 games.

There will be ten teams in your conference, not in your division. Once each, home and away, vs. each of those teams is 20 games.

There will be four other teams in your division. Eight games vs. each team, four home and four away, is another 32 games.

30+20+32=82 games, and everyone plays everyone else at least twice every season. Yeah, you’ve still got a lot of games within your division, but that will keep travel costs to a minumim for everyone, and allow for the development of more intense rivalries with teams in your division.

Bring back the Wales and Campbell Conferences, and the Smythe, Patrick, Adams and Norris Divisions… and add the Richard Division and the Howe Division for good measure.

A Gordie Howe Trophy for the league’s top power forward — defined by a formula takung into consideration size, role, goals, points, and penalty minutes for “toughness-related” offenses like fighting and roughing — and a Stan Mikita/Peter Stastny Trophy for the league’s top European-born player, would be nice also.

But all of this would make WAY too much sense for Bettman the marketing and operations genius…

by GT Prospect Department on Nov 30, 2007 7:40 PM CST reply actions