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Originally Posted by letmesleep
Originally before I was working on the scheduling, I agreed with you. You should be able to see every player in your home arena once a year. However, when I started working on the numbers, I realized what a HUGE chunk of games that would take up: 58 out of 82. That only leaves 24 games to split among division opponents and conference opponents. In a sport that relies heavily on rivalries, I thought that was too few. I just worked out the numbers: if the Penguins came to Edmonton every season, you would only see Calgary in town twice. You would only see Vancouver in town twice. The only way anyone would see any of their divisional rivals more than twice a season would be if the schedulers thought that one of your 5-6 extra games should be against your division rival and it should be in your home town.
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Simple analysis often shows the impracticality of some ideas that seem great before you try to actually fit them into a structure. Might also explain why the League hasn't gone with a League-wide home-and-home schedule for quite a long time. Hey, I like the idea also, but...
What I think could be done is to have paired Divisions to the two Conferences, and the teams in those Divisions regularly do the home-and-home series every year; while the single game against the teams in the other Divisions are continued to be structured to alternate from the one city to the other from one Season to the next.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MessierII
Except your math is wrong because you already play your divisional rivals twice each in those 58 games.
Going by the example of the NHLs proposal using the Edmonton Oilers 46 games would be played against non divisional rivals the other 36 split between their 7 divisional rivals. Not looking so bad anymore eh?
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Yes, his math is wrong, but not totally so. Starting with the home-and-home against every team, that means already 2 games against Division rivals, as you say, as well as 2 games against all other in-Conference opponents. But still, with 14 teams in the Conference, in order to play at least another even home-and-home against each one, that requires 28 more games. However, as his calculation shows, there are only 24 more games to go around. Some in-Conference home-and-homes, for the balanced Conference schedule, would have to be short-changed.
