As has become tradition, National Hockey League commissioner Gary Bettman and deputy commissioner Bill Daly held court with the assembled media in Denver on Wednesday evening in advance of the opening game of the Stanley Cup Final. Here are the pertinent takeaways from their chat.
The 2022-23 regular season is scheduled to begin on Oct. 11, which is a Tuesday. The 2021-22 season began on Oct. 12, which was also a Tuesday. The NHL is running about 12 days behind their “usual” schedule this season – free agency usually opens on July 1 rather than this year’s July 13 – and while starting a day later doesn’t seem conducive to catching up, there’s no Olympic break built into this season’s calendar and between that and a slightly compressed schedule, the expectation right now is for the Stanley Cup to be given out next year in mid-June and everything to return to the standard schedule.