There’s a clear change in schedule-making that has prioritized certain technologies to put together the calendar. We’ve seen increased quirks, like when all the Devils-Rangers games were in March last season. It seems like a team of humans building the schedule would catch something like that. A machine or artificial intelligence might miss that type of context.
How much AI is used in scheduling is not exactly known, but it seems like the Devils are back into one of those scheduling quirks.
On Wednesday night, the Devils got destroyed by the Colorado Avalanche. They looked like a different team than the one from the night before. And there was a reason for that. For one, they were on the second half of a back-to-back. That, in of itself, is not worth complaining about. Every team has back-to-backs in their schedule. The Devils just took advantage of that when they beat the Avalanche just a few weeks ago.
The issue is the Devils had to travel from Dallas to Colorado, changing time zones and seriously changing elevation, trying to play one of the fastest teams in the league. It was like skating in quicksand, and it was a clear schedule loss.
But now, with less than a full day off, the Devils are back at it again. Puck drop for the Avalanche-Devils game was at 9 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Their matchup with the Vegas Golden Knights is Friday at 6 p.m. So by the time the Devils got out of their gear, prepared to fly to Vegas, landed after leaving Denver, and got back to the hotel, it’s probably close to 3 a.m. EST. If they waited until the morning, it would just elongate the process, but it might be helpful to regulate rest.
Either way, puck drop for their third game in four days comes with just 42 hours of rest, with part of that three hours minimum for travel time.
These are hard decisions teams shouldn’t have to make.
The Devils are facing three of the best teams in the NHL back-to-back-to-back. Vegas had two days off before this game and has played one game this week. The Avalanche had two days off before their Devils game, and the Stars had a day off between games. The Devils were dealing with a dearth of rest, and now they are going into a Vegas game and they are probably exhausted.
We’re not trying to make excuses, but the schedule of this trip needed to be addressed. Teams will want some day games, and teams have to travel to them. They might not want their premier rivalries for those games, but we have to protect our athletes first and foremost. The Devils will be tired for this game, just like they were for the Avalanche game.
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