BREAKING: NHL considering MAJOR change in team schedules

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Ryan
December 15, 2022 (6:33 PM)

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The National Hockey League is a business, and being a business they're already looking for more ways to make the league more profitable.

Since the beginning of the COVID19 virus, the NHL's salary cap has remained flat, so they've been looking for ways to add money, and it's been with adding new types of advertising. They've also ensured that every teams gets to face each other atleast once per season, so a team like Arizona can get the benefits of a player like Connor McDavid, Sidney Crosby or Alex Ovechkin coming to their arena.

Not too long ago the NHL went to a divisional playoff model to build more of a rivalry in the playoffs, which to some degree has worked, but the more the league has expanded, the less divisional games have been played amongst teams and at the moment teams are only playing teams 3 times per season from their division.

But now it sounds like the NHL is really valuing those inner-division rivalries even more and want to capitalize on them.

Sportico reported that the NHL is possibly changing the regular season schedule as early as next year to create more rivalry games:

Exclusive: The NHL is considering overhauling its schedule.

Team owners and executives have recently discussed efforts to create more games between geographic rivals�and ultimately generate more money.

As soon as next season, teams like Edmonton and Calgary could play as many as eight games against each other, rather than the current three.

The idea behind this shift was partially bolstered by the NHL's COVID-disrupted 2020-21 season, when the league redrew all four divisions.

As soon as next season, teams like Edmonton and Calgary could play as many as eight games against each other, rather than the current three.

The idea behind this shift was partially bolstered by the NHL's COVID-disrupted 2020-21 season, when the league redrew all four divisions� Sportico (@Sportico) December 15, 2022

Now people did not like seeing their team play the same team over and over again like they did in the COVID season, but now imagine you get to see the battle of Alberta build over the regular season and then meet again in the playoffs. That could be some entertaining hockey.