NHL Schedule goes Back to the Future

by Bob Herpen
The Phanatic Magazine

As promised, the NHL has revamped its schedule matrix for the upcoming season and presented the league with greater opportunity for each team to play all other 29 clubs in the course of an 82-game schedule.

For the Flyers, this means they will have only 24 as opposed to 32 division games – six each against the Rangers, Devils, Penguins and Islanders – three each at home and on the road.

There will still be two home and two road games each against opponents from the Northeast and Southeast Divisions, but the new wrinkle is that they will face every team from the West at least once with three additional wild-card games against non-conference foes.

Hmmm…hockey fans, doesn’t this sound very familiar?

As in, this is the exact schedule breakdown the league used from the inclusion of Columbus and Minnesota in 2000 until 2004.

In 2008-09, Philly heads to Denver on October 16, and home fans may get to see Peter Forsberg and Joe Sakic in one last go-round at the Wachovia Center when the Avalanche come here December 16. Vengeance goes to NoCal on October 16 and the Sharks invade these waters six days later, while former coach Terry Murray hosts the Flyers January 3 and brings his Kings in on February 25.

So what gives? Why Colorado, San Jose and Los Angeles? What logic could there have been to select those teams above all other better draws to get an extra game? I mean, here’s the club that pulled itself from dead last into the conference finals, and this is the best draw?

Anyone reading this could have done a better job reaching into a hat with little slips of paper to pull out more favorable match-ups.

For all the talk about the NHL progressing, improving and setting trends for future success, it’s just another in a series of perplexing moves that it would alter its schedule under a format that came under fire before the fallout of the cancelled season.

If you recall, the three-year plan created once the league returned in 2005 was one of the minor concessions commish Gary Bettman and the owners gave the players as compensation for the salary cap and salary rollback.

The NHLPA went for it because player reps, particularly from the Western clubs, complained for years about energy-draining cross-continental road swings. That’s how the eight games against division foes and four against conference opponents reared its head – to limit travel within a manageable sphere.

But suddenly, lack of travel isn’t good enough any more because certain teams are gypped of the gate from opposite conference opponents who might be a draw.

Well, boo freakin’ hoo. Let’s not keep altering the slate every few years based on the whim of either players or owners.

Just about the only good thing to come from the upcoming season’s schedule is the Winter Classic, coming to Chicago on January 1. The NHL got everything right on this: keeping the game on New Year’s Day; an Original Six meeting between the Blackhawks and Red Wings; staged at Wrigley Field and in front of a national audience on a national network.

That’s more than I can say for the All-Star Game, which is scheduled in Montreal for the first time since 1993.

Inexplicably, it takes place on a Sunday evening – January 25 - which happens to once again exist smack in the middle of the NFL playoffs. It’s still to be broadcast on Versus - a basic cable network that struggled to get a million viewers for the exhibition last year.

Back when the league was stretched just perfectly with 26 clubs in four divisions, each team played the other two, four, five, or six times. There was a guaranteed gate, home-and-road, for all opposite conference teams.

The way things are set up now, there’s too much left to chance. Sure, the Capitals and Blackhawks are two clubs with exciting new players, but one game between the two isn’t enough. A double dip may happen by luck of the draw one year, but that’s not good enough.

Likewise, larger or long-established markets should still have an inside track to the extra marquee contests. That means two games per year, no excuses, between Original Six clubs in different conferences.

I don’t think Flyers fans would object to losing an extra home or road game against doormats Florida or Atlanta to create an extra meeting with the Red Wings, Stars or Avalanche. There are thousands of us out there who grew up staying up late over the holidays to watch games in Edmonton, or celebrated a little early on New Year’s Eve after a thrashing of the Canucks in Vancouver.

Instead, for your viewing pleasure, you get a Colorado club that is a weak shell of former self Sakic, Forsberg or not. The Sharks are a weak-hearted club which actually made itself worse in the offseason. And the Kings just flat-out stink.

Perhaps the best outcome of the change is that hockey fans in all 30 cities only have to wait three more years for the complaints to build up and another alteration is required.