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When it comes to exhibition games during the National Hockey League pre-season, there’s a general pattern for how player and fan enthusiasm unfolds. At first, everyone’s excited to be back. Then, there’s a malaise as everyone realizes how many games are left to play. And then? A general sense of dread, as injuries pile up to key players in games that don’t count in the standings and teams face being without those players when the games start to matter.
Maybe it’s because of the slew of injuries, but this year’s pre-season felt longer than usual. And with the current collective bargaining agreement between the National Hockey League and its players expiring in September 2026 (and negotiations set to begin soon), the often-discussed possibility of shortening the pre-season and getting to meaningful games more quickly has arisen.
If that comes to pass when the new CBA is hammered out, there could be some ripple effects for teams.

Is the NHL considering a shorter pre-season?

Our pal Frank Servalli at Daily Faceoff attending the NHL’s board of governor meetings earlier this month, and here’s part of his report from the proceedings:
This year, there were 106 preseason games scheduled over 15 days and 40 venues. The long-rumored belief is that the NHL will be willing to cut the preseason slate in half in exchange for adding two additional regular season games to make for an 84-game regular season.
Bettman conceded an 84-game season is “on a list of things to think about.” NHL teams played 84-game regular seasons in 1992-93 and 1993-94, stretching the first two years of Bettman’s tenure as commissioner, before the schedule dropped to 82 after the 1994-95 lockout.
Currently, the combination of an 82-game schedule and a 32-team league has resulted in a bit of an asymmetric divisional schedule. The Flames, for example, play four games each against five divisional opponents and three games each against two. Expanding to an 84-game schedule would, in theory, balance that out (unless the league expands beyond 32 teams).
The number of exhibition games each team plays is spelled out in Article 15, Section 4, subsection (b) of the CBA, which specifies that teams have to play between six and eight games. (This season Nashville only played five because of a cancellation of a previously-scheduled game.) If that number was to be reduced, it would need to be collectively bargained.

A player’s perspective on the pre-season’s length

Seeking an informed opinion on the pre-season’s ideal length, we asked Calgary Flames defenceman Rasmus Andersson prior to the final pre-season game against Winnipeg.
“I don’t know how other teams does it, but I guess the older guys in here, we play around four games,” said Andersson. “But at the same time, you’ve been young once, too. If it’s four games, how many games does a young guy get in? So you see it from both sides.”
After a short detour into a discussion of his preference towards starting the season on October 1 and ending it April 1, Andersson returned to his thoughts on the exhibition calendar.
“Pre-season games? You know, I see it for both sides,” said Andersson. “If you’re a young guy, if you’re one of those bubble guys you probably want 10 games, show yourself a little bit more. I remember when I was young: one bad game and that’s it. There’s no kind of redemption. But you know, as an older guy, sure, four games would be nice, but how many would you get in? Two, three?”
“It’s not a question for me, if you put it that way. I could go on and on, but nobody would really care, I think.”

How many pre-season games did each Flames player play?

After chatting with Andersson we were curious as to how the Flames divided up duties in their eight pre-season games, so we dug into it. Due to the split squad set-up early in camp, the maximum number of games any player could dress for was seven.
Games
Goalies
Defencemen
Forwards
6
–
–
Sam Honzek
5
Devin Cooley (played in 3)
Daniil Miromanov
Matt Coronato
Adam Klapka
Sam Morton
Jakob Pelletier
Kevin Rooney
Connor Zary
4
Dan Vladar
Dustin Wolf
Tyson Barrie
Jake Bean
Brayden Pachal
MacKenzie Weegar
Mikael Backlund
Jonathan Huberdeau
Ryan Lomberg
Anthony Mantha
Cole Schwindt
Yegor Sharangovich
3
–
Hunter Brzustewicz
Artem Grushnikov
Ilya Solovyov
Jarred Tinordi
Clark Bishop
Blake Coleman
Walker Duehr
Martin Frk
Dryden Hunt
Nazem Kadri
Justin Kirkland
Andrei Kuzmenko
Martin Pospisil
2
Connor Murphy (played in 0)
Kevin Bahl
Joel Hanley
Zayne Parekh
Jeremie Poirier
Andrew Basha
Matvei Gridin
William Strömgren
1
Waltteri Ignatjew
Joni Jurmo
Yan Kuznetsov
Henry Mews
Lucas Ciona
Jaden Lipinski
Luke Misa
0
Matt Radomsky
Jonathan Aspirot
Axel Hurtig
Eric Jamieson
Etienne Morin
Jacob Battaglia
Parker Bell
Alex Gallant
Trevor Janicke
Rory Kerins
Hunter Laing
Luke McNamara
Ilya Nikolaev
David Silye
The Flames began their camp with 64 players, ranging from unsigned players on try-outs (McNamara), AHL depth players on AHL contracts, AHL depth players on NHL contracts, fringe NHL players, unsigned drafted prospects, and bonafide NHLers.
Their general pattern was to get the younger, less experienced games in early – especially sending them on road games, which gave youngsters significant ice time and spared veterans from the headache of travelling to opposition cities the day of the game. As the pre-season wore on, a lot of the younger faces disappeared and lineups became more NHL-focused.
But for the Flames, the exhibition season’s length allowed them to get more prolonged looks at players like Sam Honzek, Sam Morton and Hunter Brzustewicz who they hadn’t yet see extensively at the pro level. As Andersson alluded to, a shorter pre-season would likely mean fewer opportunities for younger players, as teams would need to get to NHL-focused lineups much more quickly than they do now. Would getting to those NHL-heavy lineups earlier necessarily mean fewer injuries?
NHL training camps are presently about three weeks for veterans (four weeks for prospects) with the current amount of exhibition games; would they become shorter if the number of games were reduced? Would teams have smaller camps, as we saw during the camps that were run before the NHL’s “bubble” 2020-21 season, which saw the Flames invite 45 players for a roughly 10-day camp?
Either way, there are good reasons for reducing the number of exhibition games. But as detailed, the move wouldn’t be without its potential drawbacks.