Recalibrating the NHL’s schedule

Joe Scaringi
February 4, 2009

They say that the Stanley Cup is the hardest trophy to win in all of pro sports. Think about it: 82 regular season games, four gruelling rounds of playoff hockey, all over a period of eight months.

While the playoff match-ups are determined by a simple formula – best versus worst and everyone in the middle – those 82 games during the regular season are determined by an intrinsically complicated system. A system so complex, you and I couldn’t even begin to untangle the intimacies of what make it work. But, hey, why don’t we give it a shot anyway?

Now, I have to warn you: it’s going to get complicated. You need to pay attention. One little brain cramp and it’s going to mess things up for the both of us.

There will be some math involved. Don’t get all excited; I’m not going to ask you to take any derivatives or define any algebraic equations. I’m just making you aware. It’ll actually be quite simple.

Oh, I almost forgot: there’s going to be some geography involved as well. It’d be best if you hit up Google real quick and scored yourself a map of North America – just so you can follow along more easily.

Got it? Perfect. Let’s get started then, shall we?

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The NHL consists of 30 teams (I’m trying to start you off slow here). Ideally, each of those 30 teams would play an equal number of games against each of the 29 others, thus ensuring that all clubs have an equal schedule across the board. Ideally, that would be the case.

The NHL, however, is divided into two conferences – East and West – and the league seems hell-bent on ensuring that a given team’s schedule is conference-heavy. Each conference is then divided into three separate divisions, and the league uses these divisions to schedule even more games to divisional foes than to regular conference opponents. The idea behind both conference and division-heavy schedules is based firstly on the notion of increasing local rivalries, and secondly on the notion of geography – a given team will have less travelling to do when their schedule remains as local as possible.

While the former may have good intentions, the latter is somewhat of an oxymoron.

Okay, here is where your map comes into play. See if you can plot each of the 30 cities containing an NHL franchise on your map. Come on, it’s not that hard: Dallas is in Texas, Detroit is in Michigan, Nashville is in Tennessee.

If you have at least two-thirds of the teams plotted, you’ve likely come to the conclusion that the league is very much based in the east.

Now I want you to draw a line down the middle of the continent. What happens? Depending on how accurate your line is, you should be looking at anywhere from 20 to 22 teams on the right and eight to 10 on the left – Minnesota and Dallas are sort of borderline.

So, geographically speaking, what we have on our hands is a 20-team Eastern Conference, and only 10 left for the West. That’s just geography and, like math, it does not lie.

Alright, now do a parallel shift of your line so that it is just to the right of Columbus.

Assuming you did it correctly, there should be 15 teams on either side, thus creating the NHL’s Eastern and Western Conferences. In essence what we did when we shifted the line was create the Central Division.

The moral of the story: Eastern Conference teams are babies.

Seriously NHL, reduce travel? How hard is it to hop on a subway from Toronto to Buffalo? Or to cross the toll both from New Jersey to New York? Is a reduction in travel really necessary? In a single career, a player in the Western Conference likely racks up enough Frequent Flyer Miles to fly himself and his family to Neptune. Case in point: The Northwest Division – Minnesota could not be more out in the middle of nowhere. Wait, yes they could – they could be Colorado. Dallas in the Pacific Division is not much better.

Anyway, post-lockout, the so-called “New NHL” decided to increase divisional games to a whopping eight per season. Then a team’s schedule looked like this:

8 games x 4 divisional opponents   = 32 games
4 games x 10 conference opponents   = 40 games
1 game x 10 out-of-conference opponents   = 10 games
  = 82 games

 

Note 32 divisional games – that’s almost half a season just inside one’s own division. Why? The league wants to increase divisional rivalries. Okay, but eight games? Isn’t that a bit excessive? Sure the Battle of Ontario is cool, so is the Battle of Alberta; The Battle of New York is nothing to scoff at either. But do we really need to see Los Angeles play Phoenix eight times? Or Atlanta versus Florida? Do we really need to be subject to this eight times a season? Even those provincial battles start to lose some of their novelty when they occur that often.

But that’s only the beginning.

Only 10 games were allotted to the other conference! Those 10 games were divided up such that a team would travel to one division, host a second, and did not play the third at all, with these divisional assignments rotating annually.

Clearly, whatever geniuses in the NHL brass came up with this system did not take a single class in marketing. To demonstrate, say you live in Vancouver. Guess what? You only get to see Sidney Crosby come to town once every three years. Same goes for Alex Ovechkin. Vinny Lecavalier too. Starting to get the idea?

After subjecting fans to this for three seasons, the league finally decided a change was necessary.

You see, one of the appeals of the division-heavy format was that everything was wrapped up in a nice, tidy package – easy for the league to implement, easy for fans to understand.

As of the 2008-09 season, the league reduced the number of divisional games to six and allotted the extra games to the other conference. Here’s what we ended up with:

6 games x 4 divisional opponents   = 24 games
4 games x 10 conference opponents   = 40 games
1-2 games x 15 out-of-conference opponents   = 18 games
  = 82 games

 

See, there’s a problem already: no nice, tidy package. With only 15 out-of-conference opponents and 18 games to allocate, a club ends up playing three of those teams twice. How then do you decide which? Alignment of the stars maybe…?

Anyway, while this is obviously a step in the right direction, it still leaves room for improvement. I’m fairly confident that those three extra inter-conference games cause Gary Bettman many sleepless nights – I mean, is your brain not hurting a little just thinking about it?

Here’s an idea: why not round off to 20 games? Say you like, oh I don’t know, the Calgary Flames. The way it would work is the Flames would travel to the Atlantic Division, host the Northeast, and have a home-and-home against the Southeast – and there’s your 20 games. These divisional assignments would of course rotate annually.

What’s that you say? This is too nice and tidy to be true? More importantly, where do those two extra games come from? The logical answer is to increase the current 82-game format to 84 games, which is something the league has been looking at anyway.

Don’t like that idea?

What about this? Take two of the divisional games away. If we go back to the Calgary example, their divisional schedule would look as follows:

5 games vs Colorado

5 games vs Edmonton

6 games vs Minnesota

6 games vs Vancouver

22 divisional games

Again, the extra games would rotate on an annual basis.

Still, there is a third option. There have been many critics opposing an 84-game format, citing the season is already too long at 82. Well, hang on to your socks folks, because this may just be the smartest move yet: an 80-game schedule. Voila – five divisional games across the board.

Anyway, choosing how to allocate those two extra games is really irrelevant at this juncture. The important thing to note in this scenario is that allocating 20 games outside of the conference not only allows a club to play each team each season, it also allows each club to visit each city two out of every three seasons.

The package couldn’t be tidier. And not a single application of the quadratic formula was necessary. I told you it wouldn’t be that bad.

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The Author:

Joe Scaringi