Should the NHL consider playing season finales simultaneously?

By Vinnie Witel  ■  NJDevsBlog.com

The final full night of the 2012-13 National Hockey League season still had three teams fighting for the final two playoff spots in the Western Conference. It happened that all three games were being played roughly at the same time — the Detroit Red Wings at the Dallas Stars and the Nashville Predators at the Columbus Blue Jackets had a 7 p.m.  Eastern puck drop, and the Minnesota Wild at the Colorado Avalanche had a 7:30 p.m. Eastern puck drop. 

Columbus, Detroit and Minnesota were going into their season finale trying to fight for the right to claim the final two spots in the Western Conference. All three games were close going into the third period.

To me it was fun watching Dallas and Detroit going at it on the nationally televised game on NBC Sports Network. During the game, they kept flashing the scores of the Columbus/Nashville and Minnesota/Colorado every two minutes and we kept hearing about what was at stake.

Detroit needed just one point to clinch and they did with a 3-0 win over Dallas, their 22nd-consecutive playoff berth. It’s the longest active streak in the four major North American professional sports leagues.

Columbus needed to win to keep their playoff hopes alive, and they needed Minnesota to lose in any fashion. Columbus won, 3-1, over Nashville, but unfortunately for them about a half hour later, Minnesota finished off Colorado and it’s the Wild who got the 8th and final seed in the Western Conference.

But seeing these games go on at the same time got me the idea they should play the final night of regular season games in the NHL simultaneously.

Yes I know there may be some questions of people who oppose this and they may have valid arguments. Like what happens if a game gets postponed because of storms making it hard to travel or tragedies like what happened in Boston a couple of weeks ago where two Bruins games were postponed?

Then, yes, the NHL may have to reschedule games that will go beyond the final day of the regular season like the Ottawa Senators at Boston Bruins game which was scheduled for April 15, but then was postponed due to the Boston Marathon bombing.

The chances of these games being postponed are still slim and the season ending on schedule is still highly probable.

Under the new realignment starting next season, this idea would work out great. You have even numbered teams in both the Western and Eastern conferences. You can have it where it’s just games within the conference on the final day of the NHL regular season.

All 30 teams play, you can have all the Eastern Conference games starts at 7 p.m. Eastern since all east teams play in the Eastern Time Zone.

Then, all the Western Conference games start play at 8 p.m. Eastern time to accommodate the start times from the teams in the Western Conference who play in the Central Time Zone, still having the 7 p.m.  local puck drop, and 5 p.m. West Coast time for the puck drop.

These games might determine the top three teams in each division and the wildcard can be settled after the games end instead of teams waiting a couple of hours to see where they will be seeded or yet wait another day for their playoff fate to be decided.

I say try to experiment with this idea for a couple of years.

If it doesn’t work out, then go back to how they would normally schedule games. 

I strongly think if you give this idea a chance, it will work out and I guarantee that even a good portion of initial skeptics would eventually accept this concept permanently.

This will work, of course, barring any lockouts, realignments or teams relocating in the future.