from Dan Caesar of the St, Louis Post-Dispatch,

It’s playoff season in the NHL, time when you’d think the league would want to treat its existing fan base like royalty while also trying to hook casual viewers into full-fledged customers. So what do the NHL and its television partners do to their customers? They treat them like peasants.

They start some contests at inconvenient hours, then to make matters worse they make fans wait even longer by telling them the wrong game time.

The Blues have played four playoff contests so far against the Minnesota Wild, and they have started an average of 14 minutes after the listed starting times. There has been a total of 55 minutes thus far of fans waiting around in the stands — and the TV and radio audience being put on hold. That total almost certainly will surpass a full hour Friday night.

And because of television, fans of several teams in the Central time zone also have been subject to games that are scheduled to start 90 minutes later than is the norm in the regular season — 8:30 p.m. instead of 7 o’clock. Three contests in the Blues-Wild series have been tabbed for that inconvenient time. The reason: The networks often show an earlier game and hope it will end before the later contest begins. But that 8:30 “start” time isn’t really when the game begins.

The opening faceoff for a weeknight game last week in St. Louis was 8:40. And Wednesday in Minnesota it was 8:45 p.m. .

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