NHL Reportedly Eyeing Controversial Money-Making Tactic

The NHL could be shortening the offseason for its players in an effort to make more money with a longer season.

NHL Reportedly Eyeing Controversial Money-Making Tactic

It is no secret that the NHL will go wherever the money is. This has led to many moves that fans and players have voiced their displeasure with.

Recently, in an effort to raise the salary cap, the NHL has considered a controversial idea to make the season longer to generate more income.


Per Larry Brooks:


The current NHL season has 1,312 total games and an 84-game season increased that number to 1344.

It makes a lot of sense on paper to do this because right now teams do not play division rivals an equal amount of times with five being played four times and the remaining two division rivals being played three times.

Why The Players Won't Like This

Players won't like this because it will take away almost a week from their offseason which is a substantial amount of time away from family.

The NHL previously expanded to 84 games from 1992-94 in an effort to expand the game by playing neutral sites twice a year. With this only lasting two seasons, one can infer that it failed pretty quickly.

Now it makes sense to have a slightly longer season from a scheduling standpoint. If the NHL wanted to implement this though, they would have to shorten the preseason which many players are not a fan of.

Could there be a middle ground of a shorter preseason in exchange for two more games to make the NHL more money? Would Gary Bettman be willing to budge?