NHL schedule, I hate it!!

Happy New Year people!

This weeks blog is for hockey fans, its kind of old news now but I decided I would finally reveal how I feel about the current NHL schedule situation.

Like most die hard hockey fans in western Canada and perhaps all of North America, I was very dissapointed in the NHL schedule laid out by the board of goveners in 2005. This current format sees divisional opponents face each other 8 times during the course of the season. This also causes the interconference games to become very scarce. This was never more evident than when Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburge Penguins paid a visit to Edmonton last month. That was the first time since 2001 that Oiler fans got to see the Penguins. As an NHL fan that pays top dollar to watch these games, I find it very frusterating. The fans out west hardly get to see any eastern conference teams. This season we will only see 6 out of the 15 eastern conference teams play in Edmonton while we will see teams like Vancouver and Calgary come to town 4 times.

The reasoning the league gave for this type of schedule was the need to build rivalries within the divisions, to add to the provincal and state rivalries like the battle of Alberta (Edmonton vs Calgary) battle of Ontario (Ottawa vs Toronto) etc. I can understand the need for this but I think there can be more balanced approach to all this, even cutting the number of divisonal games to 6 instead of 8 would really help. The other reasons for the schedule are purely economic and geographical. The eastern teams clearly bennefit geographically, just look at how much easier the travel situations are for teams like the New York Rangers, The New York Islanders, The New Jersey Devils, The Montreal Canadians, The Toront Maple Leafs, etc. All these teams are within a very short flight from each other. In some cases I believe the New York Rangers do not even need to fly for certain games like when they go to Long Island or New Jersey, its a short bus ride for them. Out west its a very different picture. In the northwest division every team HAS to fly to EVERY game. Edmonton for example has the farthest to travel, the closest city is Calgary which is about a 40 minute flight, but beyond that Edmonton has to fly 1.5 hours or more to play the road games. Theres a large economic impact as well, eastern teams save a ton of money by playing most of their games regionally. Im not sure if the powers at be at the NHL are biased and want to cater to the east more since most of the TV dollars and the large populations are out there but I know that the east teams bennefit from the schedule. Im sure the fans acrosss the league including the eastern fans would like to see more teams like the Oilers and Canucks play out there as well.

From what I understand, the league is working on a new schedule that will take effect in the 2009-2010 season (I think). Hopefully this one is more balanced and will bring more teams to each city every year so the fans can see more of the youger superstars like Crosby and Ovechkin and not have to wait 3 years or travel across the country to see them.

Denny.