Folks, it can be tough to make a good National Hockey League schedule. There are a lot of variables to juggle, including the schedules for 32 often very busy buildings that house NHL clubs. Sometimes team schedules vary in quality quite a bit.
Over at Daily Faceoff, our pal Jason Gregor spent a ton of time digging into the minutiae of all 32 clubs’ schedules for the upcoming 2024-25 season. We’ll take a look at what he discovered about the Flames’ schedule, and how that compares to three other teams that are fairly close to the Flames geographically: the Edmonton Oilers, the Vancouver Canucks and the Seattle Kraken.
The Flames, at a glance
Via Gregor, here’s the high-level rundown of the Flames’ schedule:
Distance travelled this season: 44,400 miles (23rd).
BTB games: 10 (T-4th).
Facing a team playing second night of BTB: 10 (T-23rd).
Longest home stand: Five games from Dec 12th to 21st.
Home stands by GP: One (5x), two (4x), three (5x), four (2x) and five (1x).
Longest road trip: Six games from Feb 25th to Mar 6th.
Road trips by GP: One (5x), two (6x), three (2x), four (3x) and six (1x).
Games by day of week: Sun (9), Mon (7), Tues (19), Wed (6), Thurs (16), Fri (5) and Sat (20).
Quirk or difficult part in schedule: Flames fans will only see three Pacific division opponents on home ice in the first three months with EDM (Nov 3rd), LA (Nov 11th) and VAN (Dec 31st). That is three of their first 19 home games. Fifteen of their final 25 games are on the road, and that stretch begins right around the trade deadline. if they are a seller, as many expect, they could improve their draft lottery odds in the season’s final few months.
Within the Pacific Division, teams will play four times against five opponents and three times against two opponents. The Flames will play Edmonton and Los Angeles three times apiece this season.
Comparing with the neighbouring teams
Now, let’s compare a few schedule stats with the neighbouring teams…
Flames | Oilers | Canucks | Kraken | |
Distance (miles) | 44,400 | 50,000 | 42,500 | 48,400 |
Back-to-backs | 10 | 13 | 10 | 12 |
Opponent back-to-backs | 10 | 13 | 13 | 9 |
Shorter Pacific series | Oilers, Kings | Flames, Canucks | Oilers, Kings | Ducks, Golden Knights |
In theory, things should balance out: if a team has a ton of back-to-backs, they’ll face teams on their own back-to-backs. If they travel a ton, they’ll get fewer back-to-backs. That’s the theory, at least.
Vancouver has the least travel of the four teams here, with Edmonton having the most. Despite being just across the border from each other, Seattle travels 5,900 miles more than Vancouver. They also have two more sets of back-to-backs than Vancouver… and face four fewer opponents than Vancouver does on back-to-backs. Simply put: Vancouver has an easier schedule based on the information we’ve cobbled together.
There’s a similar situation happening with the Flames and Oilers. The Oilers travel 5,600 miles more than the Flames and have more back-to-backs than Calgary does. That is somewhere balanced out, though, with the Oilers also getting more teams on back-to-backs – the way you would hope it to be. The Flames definitely have an easier schedule, though, particularly with less travel than their northern neighbours.
And yeah, compared to a lot of teams – especially their divisional pals – the Flames have a schedule where some of the tougher opponents are back-loaded in their schedule, so it’s not impossible to imagine them making a few moves prior to the trade deadline and then sliding back a bit like they did in 2023-24.
The Flames have 19 games scheduled following the Mar. 7, 2025 trade deadline. They have nine games against 2023-24 playoff teams – Vancouver, Colorado twice, Toronto, the Rangers, Dallas, Edmonton and Vegas twice – and 10 games against 2023-24 non-playoff teams (though one of those teams is New Jersey, which could be in the playoffs next season). Regardless, it’s not tough to imagine the Flames having a post-deadline slump in 2024-25.
What do you think of the Flames’ 2024-25 schedule? Do you think their travel schedule is easier or tougher than their neighbours? Let us know in the comments!
