by Kenneth Boser II

Created on: April 15, 2008

The schedule for the NHL playoffs is determined by two factors, (three if you count television exposure such as NBC, or Versus).

First, the visiting teams must have time to travel to the host city for their series. Alas, there were three games on Wednesday, four on Thursday, and one on Friday. Ordinarily and customarily, there is an understanding that teams would play every other day for seven games, or thirteen days. Sometimes this is interrupted by other scheduled events at the specific arena, as was the case for the Colorado Avalanche. The event in question could not be avoided or moved to another date, since the college hockey tournament "Frozen Four" was held in Denver. That is the reason why Colorado was in the game on Friday, because Boston College and Notre Dame, the finalists in the college hockey tournament, played on Thursday, and then on Saturday.

Second, the availability of the arenas for play is an issue, but one resolved as a means of fielding a winning hockey team. Some teams will, in order to get games played in a timely manner, play games on back to back nights.

Usually, the playoff setup goes something like what I'll attempt to illustrate below:

Wednesday, Friday, Sunday, Monday, off Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday is an example of how a playoff series would be scheduled. The potential is that the teams would play four games in six nights, but have no more than eight days off if the team won the series in four games or five.

Also, the games are staggered. If half of the teams are playing on Wednesday, the other half will be playing on Thursday to start. The utlerior motive for this is television revenue, for a league that starves for cash given its bigger competitors (the NBA, the NFL, and Major League Baseball), but the purpose is to not gourd people with hockey just on one night, playing on the same night every time the players lace 'em up.

There are two additional days for each series ending, and this is put in place for the purpose of travelling to the next series. For instance, if Pittsburgh sweeps Ottawa, and Washington and New Jersey go to seven games, the two days between series allows the winner of the Washington and New Jersey series to travel to Pittsburgh to play game one of the Eastern Conference Semifinals.

All in all, the four rounds, taking on average eleven days to complete, culminates in exciting hockey for six weeks, the victor to raise the most prized trophy in sports, Lord Stanley's Cup.

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