Kudos to the NHL and NHLPA for getting a deal done.
Yes, I know, I know ... they should have gotten this deal done months ago. But I prefer to take the high road on a day in which MeiGray (and virtually every NHL partner) is scrambling to prepare after weeks and weeks and months of waiting and waiting, and hoping, and fearing, and doubting, and ...
Bottom line? We got our game back.
A 48-game regular season schedule eliminates more than one-third of the regular season games, but it will provide an action-packed three months in which EVERY regular season game will have meaning.
And although East will not venture West and West will not face the East, we will get a great amount of rivalry games and big games that will impact the playoff race.
The NHL long ago was ridiculed for its ultra-inclusive playoffs, but with 16 of 30 teams qualifying, there is a true sense of achievement to making the Stanley Cup Playoffs. And as we saw last spring when the No. 6 seeded New Jersey Devils faced the No. 8 seed Los Angeles Kings in the Stanley Cup Final, a hot team in April is more dangerous than a team atop the conference who accumulated many of its points early in the season.
I will be interested to see the quality of play early in the season. With players scrambling back from overseas teams, or their own workout regimens, and only 7-10 days of organized training camps, the early-season games figure to be interesting.
A team that gets hot early will put itself in position for a prime playoff seeding, because there will be less time for teams to play catch-up if they start slow. And that fact might jeopardize the chances of a more talented team if it does not get going early. Of course, a team that needs one or two months to jell can still sneak in and get hot in time for the full two-month Stanley Cup Tournament.
When we last played a 48-game season, back in 1994-95, I covered the New Jersey Devils for the NY Daily News and they won the Stanley Cup despite a 22-18-8 regular season and a No. 5 seed in the playoffs. The Devils were criticized in some circles for not winning in a legitimate season, but I can tell you from being there every day that the notion the 1994-95 season was not legit is ridiculous.
The 48-game season was more than enough to determine the eight deserving playoff seeds in each conference. And as we have all seen for decades, the four-round Stanley Cup Playoffs is the most grueling path for any professional team to take to win its league championship.
The Devils' first Stanley Cup was very, very deserved. They won 16 playoff games over four rounds. They defeated Boston, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia to emerge from the Eastern Conference and they swept the heavily favored Detroit Red Wings in the 1995 Finals.
Seventeen years later, here we are again with a shortened season and a long road to the summer, when the Cup will likely be lifted.
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