In the old NHL, a barn-to-barn, back-to-back, two-game set meant the two teams traveled on the same train and sometimes renewed on-ice enmity in the dining car — or buried the hatchets (or sticks) in the bar car.
That isn’t going to be the case for the San Jose Sharks and the Colorado Avalanche, who met Saturday night in the SAP Center and face each other again Monday night in the Pepsi Center.
Instead, the rigors of NHL (and NBA) travel now include exhausting, grueling, torturous charter plane travel, and the closest the teams came to train travel for this was riding from the gate to the baggage claim … wait, they don’t even have to do that.