Staggered Start Times
Center Ice commercials boast “you will see up to 40 games each week”, but anyone who actually follows the NHL, and not just one or two teams knows that isn’t the case. Tonight is a perfect example:
9 games overall
6 games start at 7:00pm
2 games start at 7:30pm
1 game starts at 8:00pm
All times EST, but that’s not the point…
Even with a DVR (digital video recorder; “Tivo” being a brand name for it) that can record two things at once, you’re stuck with two games, and maybe a snippet of two others.
I’m in New York and the Rangers have been showing shortened replays late at night, so there’s that option, and one other NY area game will be replayed in full later on as well. The latest game is on OLN, and OLN replays games an hour or so later. So I can catch more games, but none of that has anything to do with Center Ice and outside of the NY area, few have as many replays.
In short: there’s no way you can watch close 40 NHL games a week due to scheduling. Some of this is the league’s fault, some not.
The NHL by time zones:
Eastern - 17 teams
Central - 5 teams
Mountain - 4 teams
Pacific - 4 teams
Note: Phoenix does not follow daylight savings time, but is included in the Mountain time zone. Here’s a US time zone map for fun; and here’s Canada’s time zones, so I don’t leave any team out.
Obviously, it’s not easy to stagger starting times when the majority of teams play in the same time zone. However, the new unbalanced scheduled see even less time-zone crossing than before. So Pacific time zone teams play Pacific time zone teams more, meaning you will almost never see 4 games start at 10:00/7:00 ET/PT. I just heard a “my team starts at 10:30” from the crowd. Thank you. Most games used to start at 7:30, but many teams in sports, including the NHL (MLB, NBA), moved up start times to have earlier ending times. You can thank the “family friendly” kick sports have been on for a while for that one.
It’d be nice if the NHL would attempt to push some Eastern teams to have 8:00 start times on heavy game nights, maybe more 7:30s from Central teams. Give the fans at home another hour or so of hockey.
While “too much hockey” seems like a great problem for some of us fans, it also leaves us feeling a little short-changed when it comes to seeing commercials saying one thing and leaving us with another. I won’t say they’re lying in the commercials. You can certainly watch up to 40 games per week. You just need 4 DVRs to do it.
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