St. Louis Blues Face More Late Nights Against Dallas Stars
By Todd Panula
The St. Louis Blues found out who they would play in the second round first, but now they know when they will play. We will be looking at more late nights ahead.
The St. Louis Blues know who and when they will play Game 1 of their series against the Dallas Stars. It is not the best option for those that have school or work.
The Blues will open their series against Dallas at home on Thursday, April 25 at 8:30 pm. That might become a rather familiar time in this series and beyond.
Right now, it must be said, the Blues only know their schedule for Thursday. If the NHL keeps the same type of schedule going, you would assume the Blues will play Game 2 on Saturday. The main question will be whether that is an afternoon or evening game.
The Blues earned home ice. We don’t yet know if that will make any kind of difference, but in the end, you would rather have it than not.
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St. Louis would have home ice all the way through the conference finals if they make it that far. So, they better take advantage.
The issue for most fans is the timing of these games. The sad part is we just have to get used to it.
From a hockey standpoint, the Blues will see a lot of these games coming up. While we are in the middle of the country, if the Blues manage to get past Dallas, there is Colorado, San Jose or Vegas waiting. You know that will not mean earlier games.
For this round, from a television standpoint, NBC will get better ratings if they have one game just flow into another. They can preempt certain coverage in local markets, but from a national standpoint, they will get and keep more eyeballs if they have one game then immediately another.
That means double headers. That means the Blues get the shaft on the timing since they are not on the I-95 corridor up the east coast.
I get it. You have more people out east, so more eyeballs available and more people appeased with their regular time slot.
It just stinks to always be on the short end.
Instead of treating everyone the same and putting the Eastern Conference games all on one day and the Western on a different, you play favorites with the Eastern Conference. It could easily be Columbus vs. Boston in an early slot and New York vs. Washington/Carolina in the late one and then switch.
The Blues/Dallas and Vegas/San Jose vs. Colorado could do the same. Instead, the Blues will always be the later game as long as their is an Eastern Conference matchup at the same time, unless they get an afternoon game during the weekend. We can debate the merits of that another time.
Ultimately, it is what it is. The Blues, as a team, cannot worry about it whatsoever.
They need to focus on shutting down some of the players that have owned them. They can’t be worried about start times, other than knowing when to get their nap in.
For us couch warriors, we can complain about it. It is an annoyance, but one that is not going anywhere anytime soon as long as NBC is the television partner.
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That’s another problem. NBC seems to give the Blues some of the worst national crews they can find. But that’s another article for another day. For now, let’s look forward to more late nights during and hopefully beyond the Dallas series.