The NHL and Gary Bettman Under Fire for Controversial Scheduling Ahead of Tonight's 16-Game Showdown

The complaint is that the NHL is not spreading the games around enough for fans to enjoy their favorite sport on a nightly basis. This became prominent last night when there was only one game on between the Maple Leafs and Lightning. While it was an entertaining game with Vasilevskiy getting embarrassed with an early yank, most fans would have appreciated having the opportunity to watch a couple more contests as well. Making matters worse is the fact that every team in the league will be playing tonight, with most of the games overlapping so fans will be forced to pick and choose which ones they want to watch!

Furthermore, for the league's most ardent fans, this poses another dilemma. For those of us who play fantasy hockey, some of our players are going to be sitting on the bench tonight as there is no way to get everyone into the lineup with every team playing on the same night. That means tough choices for many managers. Should you bench Tom Wilson or Matthew Knies? Whichever decision you make, it feels like the players who get benched always perform better making it a frustrating night.

It is a fun idea to have every team playing on the same day, but in practice, it doesn't really work that well. Especially when the start times for games are only 15 minutes apart. This means that most games will be going into intermission at roughly the same time, so when your favorite game goes into break you won't even be able to put another game on!

Making matters even more frustrating is the fact that last night's single game was not on TV! It was only on Amazon Prime, and that was only in Canada. American viewers had no way of watching the game.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the schedule this year. It seems like the league does not know what they are doing as many games have already been rescheduled, seemingly for no reason. Luckily though, there is one piece of good news when it comes to the schedule this year. After last year's embarrassing and cringy awards show, Gary Bettman decided to finally end the tradition, moving away from an in-person awards event. Does that makeup for the fact that there are 16 NHL games tonight and only one tomorrow? Not really. Please try to be better Gary.