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NHL calendar a hot button
By
Chris Stevenson, QMI Agency
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BOCA RATON, FLA. - The NHL's general managers will meet for the next few days to ponder how they can make the game better. Safer, too.
The QMI Agency asked several players what their “hot button” issue would be when it came to improving the product on the ice.
“You want to know what we're talking about in our dressing room?” asked one player. “We look at the schedule and think no team should have to play more than 15 games in a month. There should be a limit. We're over that this month.”
The player's point is having too many games jam packed into a month affects the product. Number one, though you would have a hard time getting players to admit it on the record, is they pace themselves when they are playing a stretch of, say, four games in six nights.
It's human nature. They pick their spots. It means some fan, who is seeing a player who comes into that fan's city once a year might not see him going all out because the player knows he's got two more games to play in the next three nights.
“We play 82 games over more than six months,” said another player. “If you played 15 games a month for six months that would be 90 games, so there has to be a way to keep the schedule to 15 or less games a month.”
chris.stevenson@sunmedia.ca
Twitter: @CJ_Stevenson
