Clear Your Calendars – Some Schedule Speculation

So, the Calgary Flames made the playoffs last night. They’ll play Vancouver.

Yay.

But the most common question I’ve heard now is “When will they play?” So I did some digging on building availabilities based on what’s been announced publicly on each website. Here’s my guess-work at when the games will be.

There are concerts in Vancouver on April 14, 16 and 18. There are concerts in Calgary on April 22 and 23, as well as Game 2 and 3 of the Hitmen/Medicine Hat series on April 12 and 13. The playoff schedule is slated to begin on Wednesday, April 15, so a bunch of those bookings won’t make a difference, though if the Hitmen series goes to seven games there will be two more home games to cram in.

If Vancouver gets points in any way, shape or form tomorrow against Edmonton, they have home ice.

So we’re probably looking at something like this:

They have a three-day window in Calgary, so my guess is they do Games 3 and 4 on Sunday and Tuesday, though they may elect to run Game 4 on the Friday and spread it out a bit. I personally doubt that, though. The Vancouver dates are probably set in stone.

Long story short: most likely we’ll have four games in seven days.

If Calgary wins tomorrow and Vancouver loses in regulation to Edmonton, which could happen (ask the Kings), the Flames get home ice instead of Vancouver.

It’d probably look like this, though there’s some flexibility because Calgary isn’t booked up with concerts at the front-end and Vancouver isn’t on the back-end.

It all depends on what they want when. I personally prefer the Saturday option, as Saturday night playoff hockey just feels right. But they may move things around.

This is all speculation. The NHL will announce playoff schedules on Saturday.

Because Vancouver’s involved and Sportsnet (and the NHL) love them some double-headers, expect every single game to be an 8pm MT start time.