On Wednesday, due to the dangerous and ever-changing fire conditions in the greater Los Angeles area, the National Hockey League opted for the cautious approach and postponed the game between the Calgary Flames and the Los Angeles Kings to an unspecified later date.
Obviously, the main question everyone has is when things will get back to normal for folks in Los Angeles.
The much less important question is regarding the rescheduling of the Flames/Kings game. Given we’re devoted to noodling on fairly unimportant details, we thought we’d take a shot at estimating when that rescheduled game might land.
Now, there are some boundary conditions involved here:
  • The postponement was a Kings home game, so it would need to be rescheduled to a night when Crypto.com Arena is available. (They’re not going to move the game to the Saddledome.)
  • The NHL and NHLPA would likely prefer not to disrupt the planned break for the 4 Nations Face-off, so games can’t be scheduled between Feb. 10-21.
  • Similarly, the strong preference would be not to extend the regular season past the current final day, Apr. 17.
  • The strong preference for both teams would likely be to avoid adding anything that would cause them to play an additional back-to-back – and per league scheduling rules, nobody will be asked to play three games in three nights.
  • And given the work that went into each team’s existing schedule, the league would prefer not to have to move already-scheduled games if they can avoid it.
So where does that leave us?
In January, the Kings’ building is available on Jan. 10, 12, 14, 16, 19, and 24-31. However, none of those days work because of various scheduling conflicts with already scheduled games for the Kings or Flames.
In February, the arena is available on Feb. 1-4, 9-10, 12, 16, 19 and 23. Again, a lot of conflicts: Feb. 10, 12, 16 and 19 are off the table because of the 4 Nations Face-Off break, while the rest are out due to already scheduled games for the teams.
In March, Crypto.com Arena is free on Mar. 7, 10, 14, 17, 20, 24 and 26-28. Again, scheduling conflicts for one or both teams wipe out all of these dates.
Finally, in April, the free days for the building are Apr. 2, 6, 8-9 and 13-17. The only day that seems to work, that’s a free day for the Flames and Kings that doesn’t create scheduling headaches elsewhere, looks to be the final day of the season: Apr. 17.
We’ll see what the rescheduled date ends up being, but Apr. 17 seems, based on the publicly available schedule information for the arena and for both hockey clubs, the best (and perhaps only) available option for a new date.