Confession Time: This is the most random of posts and was instigated by an innocuous item on a local sports report I heard on my commute home from work today. The guy reading the sports noted the NHL’s trade deadline is March 3.
I didn’t give it much thought initially, but the more I considered it, the more I began to wonder how much more of the regular season is even left on March 3? Talk about the ability to rent a player for the playoffs!
The answer, by the way, is six weeks. That’s how much time is left from March 3 until the NHL’s regular season ends on April 13. A shade over 20% of the regular season remains at that point.
And away I went looking up the trade deadlines for the other North American professional leagues.
- The other fall/winter/spring sport – the NBA – by contrast, has its trade deadline February 9. The regular season ends April 9. Players in the Association who are traded have about 30% of the season to spend with their acquiring team.
- This past season for the NFL the deadline fell on November 1, following the eighth week of an 18-week regular season. Trades are relatively uncommon in the NFL, but teams that do acquire players have them for about 55% of the season, in most cases.
- In the MLB, the trade deadline is August 2 and the regular season ends this year October 1. That early August deadline leaves abourt 31% of the regular season remaining.
What’s the point, you ask?
Well, there really isn’t one. It was purely a wonder on my part and I’m fascinated at how far to both extremes the NHL and NFL are. I theorize some of the rationale on the part of the NHL’s date is to help prevent teams on the periphrey of the playoffs from tanking, but it still seems outlandish that an acquistion could – potentially – play more post-season games than regular-season games with their new team.
And speaking of NHL scheduling oddities, my hometown Red Wings played their final game before the All-Star Break on Friday on Long Island. Their next game is Tuesday, February 7. That’s 10 days off in the middle of the season??? Other teams have it the opposite way, the Boston Bruins play their final game before the break Wednesday in Toronto, but don’t play again until Saturday, February 11. Toronto, meanwhile, is back at it on Friday, February 10.
What makes the Wings’ lengthy idle stretch even more perplexing is that they currently have played the fewest games this season with 48. The Washington Capitals, by comparison, will have played 53 by the time they take their 10-day break.