Kukla's Korner Hockey

Kukla's Korner Hockey

Ready For The Bye Week

01/17/2020 at 4:51pm EST

from Eric Duhatschek of The Athletic,

All the bye weeks are scheduled around the 2020 All-Star break – which takes place Jan. 24-25 in St. Louis.

Seventeen teams will have their bye weeks going into the All-Star weekend and 14 teams will have their bye weeks coming out of it.

Tampa and Anaheim play their final games before the break this Friday (Jan. 17). Most teams have either seven or eight days off. Colorado has the longest stretch without games....

According to Edmonton Oilers general manager Ken Holland, it took the league time to get the bye-week scheduling correct, but he believes the new, revised schedule is “perfect” – because it maximizes the benefits to players and staff, but minimizes the disruption to the NHL regular season schedule.

“It’s trial and error,” said Holland. “When we went into those first manager meetings (to discuss how to implement bye weeks), I looked at those Olympic years, when everybody had 10 or 11 days off, and everyone seemed to enjoy a 10-day mid-winter vacation. If you were in the Olympics, you loved being part of the tournament. If you didn’t play, you loved taking a break. But everyone was on a level playing field.

“To the credit of the schedule maker and the people at the league, they came up with this idea of, half the league shuts down pre-All Star and half the league shuts down after. So, you continue to have games – because it’s important to have the league on TV on an every-night basis.”

much more (paid) on this topic plus other, in-depth topics, take some time and read them all...

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Paul Kukla founded Kukla’s Korner in 2005 and the site has since become the must-read site on the ‘net for all the latest happenings around the NHL.

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