One thing we want for Christmas from the NHL should be pretty simple. I watched a good chunk of Thursday’s Islanders-Rangers game from Madison Square Garden. It was thoroughly entertaining – and it was also the last meeting of the season between the two city rivals.
That’s insane. So is the fact that Tuesday’s Edmonton-Calgary game is the last Battle of Alberta of the season.
We need to get this schedule fixed.
Sportico reported last week that NHL general managers bounced around the idea of an 84-game schedule at their meeting last month in Toronto and are expected to discuss it further at their next gathering in March. It was not a topic at last week’s Board of Governors meeting in Palm Beach, Fla.
Going from 82 to 84 games isn’t perfect but it’s much better than what we have. The Sabers and Leafs only play three times this season, just like New York-New York and Edmonton-Calgary. That can’t be.
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In fact, it’s patently absurd that the Sabers play the Leafs the same number of times they play all the teams in the Metropolitan Division, and just one more time than the teams in the Western Conference.
With an 84-game schedule, at least, you’d have a better balance. There would be four games against the seven other teams in your division (28 games), three meetings against the eight teams from the other division in your conference (24) and two games against the 16 teams in the other conference (32).
The facts are obvious. Games in your division sell more tickets and draw more television ratings. Especially late-season ones. The NHL went back to a more balanced schedule a few years ago in part because Western Conference teams were complaining they were only seeing players like Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin live once every three years.
I got it. The NBA has everybody playing everybody every year. It just seems the NHL took it too far the other way. Especially if we’re going to have divisional playoffs – a whole other topic for another day – you have to have more divisional games and put them later in the season.
“They could play Calgary in Edmonton 10 times and sell them all out. It’s crazy,” one NHL general manager told ESPN.com last week.
In talking to Sabers GM Kevyn Adams last week, he said the possibility makes a lot of sense and that an earlier start to the season and a shortening of the preseason could help any proposal.
“Training camp now is so different than it was even 15 years ago. You can come into camp and practice two or three times and play,” Adams said. “Players are so much more ready to play now. They just have to ramp up to the bumping and grinding of the games and they’re ready to go.
“It’s up for (NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and deputy Bill Daly) and the NHLPA to discuss it. Whatever is better for our league and benefits us and makes more sense, it’s something I’m all for.”
As things stand right now, you have teams in your division that only come to town once a year. While the Sabers don’t take much of a hit if that team is, say, Florida, it’s a big problem when that club is Toronto like it is this season. Same for Montreal and Boston.
Preseason feels like a bigger waste of time every year. The salary cap dictates almost every spot on the roster and there are hardly any “camp battles” for positions anymore. Players work out year-round and nobody comes to camp to get into shape anymore.
Players start skating together in their city a couple of weeks before camp officially begins and this year, for instance, there were only two days of official practices before the first preseason games. Players simply didn’t need that kind of run-up to get started.
Teams playing six to eight preseason games are thus a colossal waste of time. Get your minor leaguers to minor-league camp and your junior players back to junior. You can get the regular season started in late September and maybe even award the Stanley Cup by the end of May. Or at least very early in June.
Tough time for a postponement
The Sabers and the NHL made the easy and 100% correct call to postpone Friday’s game against Tampa Bay in KeyBank Center. But as obvious as the decision was, it doesn’t make it any less disappointing.
This would have been one of the best atmospheres at a Sabers game in years. Think about it.
Coach Don Granato will be able to rest his players, particularly defensemen Rasmus Dahlin and Mattias Samuelsson. Defensemen Owen Power, Henri Jokiharju and Jacob Bryson received additional time to recover from their respective injuries.
Imagine a normal 26-degree night in December. Maybe with a couple flurries around. Think about the scene in the watering holes around the arena. A Friday night two days before Christmas. Expats with tickets in the house fired up to see the Sabers coming off that road trip, with a 3-0 record including a win over defending Stanley Cup champion Colorado and the No. 1 team in the West in Vegas. Meeting a Tampa Bay team that has handed the Sabers two crushing defeats this year but was coming off losses in Toronto and Detroit.
The Sabers in the black goatheads. The Lightning 12 the three-time defending Eastern Conference champions – on their heels trying to find their equilibrium after the previous two games.
That entire scene is now lost to Mother Nature forever. Won’t be replicated March 4. Now the Sabers return to action Tuesday. In Columbus. And fans who might be jazzed to watch will have to tune in on ESPN Plus.
(Aside: The Tage Thompson five-goal game in Columbus was on TNT. What’s with the NHL’s national broadcasters thinking Sabres-Blue Jackets would hold any sort of national interest?)
The next home game? Not until Thursday against Detroit. A full 10 days after the finale of the road trip in Vegas. Such a shame.
So the Sabers hit the holiday break eight points out of a wild-card slot as Washington roared into the break on a 9-1 burst, winning two games after Buffalo was left idle by the postponement. But the Sabers still have a lot on their side.
Buffalo is eight points behind the Capitals – but with four games in hand. The Sabers are nine points behind the Rangers, with three games in hand, and six points behind the Islanders, also with three games in hand.
What if this really is a team with a Hart Trophy candidate (Tage Thompson), a Norris Trophy candidate (Dahlin), a Calder Trophy candidate (Owen Power), the NHL’s No. 1 offense and its No. 2 power play?
In the Atlantic Division, they’re seven points behind Tampa and games are even, so they lost a chance Friday to cut that deficit to five. The Sabers are tied in points in Florida but with three games in hand. The Panthers, who won the Presidents Trophy last year, look to be the one Atlantic team that is going to take a big fall now that it appears Boston, Toronto and Tampa Bay will likely be the 1-2-3 teams.
The team to keep an eye on in the East is New Jersey. The flying Lindy Ruffs still have 46 points but they are sinking, going 3-6-2 in December and with none of the wins over current playoff teams. And their first three games after Christmas are against Boston, Pittsburgh and Carolina.
The Sabers have won four straight and are 9-3-2 in their last 14. The next two games are against Columbus and Detroit before a tough road trip to Ottawa, Boston and Washington.
“You have to have short-term goals and long-term goals. I think you pay attention to the standings. You know where you are,” Tage Thompson said during the road trip. “You’re not oblivious to that. But I think when you see the big picture, and you know where you want to be, that’s when you tone it back to the simpler questions: How can we win this five-game stretch? How Can we win this one game? How can we win this shift?
“And I think that’s kind of the way you’ve got to approach it. You can’t get too ahead of yourself, can’t bite off more than you can chew. So then you just focus on the next practice, the next game. And I think you do that, things will kind of take care of themselves.”
• For the record, Adams joined Terry Pegula as the Sabres’ representatives at the Board of Governors meeting and was one of a handful of GMs in attendance. Adams was Buffalo’s lone rep on Day 2, as Terry Pegula left to attend an NFL owners meeting. Adams stepped in for team president Kim Pegula, a regular at BOG meetings in the past who is now unable to attend because of her ongoing medical situation.
• Sabers coach Don Granato on his team watching the World Cup final between Argentina and France prior to their practice in Las Vegas: “When you watch events like that, they’re inspiring. That event is obviously amazing when you’re looking at the countries’ histories involved. It’s a pretty special event. We all learn from different sports and I think competition itself. The commonality is it’s competition, competitor against competitor.”
• Still shaking my head over the Sabres’ five-defensemen win at Colorado. Was studying shift charts the other night and they’re crazy. In the third period alone, Mattias Samuelsson played 13:17 and Rasmus Dahlin played 10:31. Samuelsson clocked in at a career-high 31:31 and Dahlin finished at 28:37, although his time is debatable. The Colorado stat crew, which spent all night changing shots on goal, had Dahlin listed for seven seconds on one Sabers power play, which was obviously incorrect.
• I continue to chuckle at trade boards listing the top players who are “available”. All the websites out there are guilty of it and it’s a cottage industry in Canada with the television networks – but almost all of these players listed are still going to be available come deadline week in March.
We know Bo Horvat, Jakob Chychrun, Patrick Kane, Jonathan Toews, Erik Karlsson and Ryan O’Reilly are probably the top names who could be moved. We also know they’re not likely to be going anywhere anytime soon, but let’s just keep clickbaiting away about moves that aren’t remotely close to happening. It’s a hockey thing.
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