NHL Shortened Season Road Trip

With the NHL season well underway, I wondered how the shortened season would impact the possibilities of a league-wide road trip. As it turns out, it is much easier to plan a trip when teams are playing more games per month and not traveling on extended road trips as there are no interconference games. Usually it takes a couple of hours to work out a reasonable trip but this time, it took less than 30 minutes. Starting today, February 1st, the following trip takes you to all 30 stadiums in just over 2.5 months.

Feb 01 St. Louis at Detroit
Feb 05 Los Angeles at Columbus
Feb 07 Carolina at Ottawa
Feb 09 Toronto at Montréal
Feb 12 NY Rangers at Boston
Feb 16 New Jersey at NY Islanders
Feb 17 Washington at NY Rangers
Feb 18 Ottawa at New Jersey
Feb 21 Florida at Philadelphia
Feb 23 New Jersey at Washington
Feb 28 Pittsburgh at Carolina
Mar 03 Carolina at Florida
Mar 07 Winnipeg at Tampa Bay
Mar 09 Minnesota at Nashville
Mar 12 San Jose at St. Louis
Mar 14 Anaheim at Dallas
Mar 21 Vancouver at Phoenix
Mar 22 Detroit at Anaheim
Mar 23 Vancouver at Los Angeles
Mar 27 Anaheim at San Jose
Mar 28 Colorado at Vancouver
Mar 29 Columbus at Calgary
Apr 01 Calgary at Edmonton
Apr 05 Detroit at Colorado
Apr 09 Chicago at Minnesota
Apr 11 Florida at Winnipeg
Apr 14 Tampa Bay at Buffalo
Apr 15 Dallas at Chicago
Apr 17 Montréal at Pittsburgh
Apr 18 NY Islanders at Toronto

What I like about this trip is that it is nearly perfect, in that you can see nearly every team on the road exactly once. Only six teams are missed in their visiting whites, and no team is seen more than twice away from home. The San Jose-Vancouver-Calgary stretch over 3 days is the only difficult drive and you would bet a nice week in between Dallas and Phoenix.

Of course, I won't be taking this trip, but as always, it is fun to plan.

Best,

Sean