For many years, Caps fans have been emailing me complaining about our divisional schedule and that we play our division rivals too many times. Eight times a season to be exact.
Also, many NHL fans emailed the league asking to see stars like Alex Ovechkin on the road more frequently.
Hence, the league announced and implemented a new schedule where by we play division rivals only six times per season and our teams now travel and play away and on the road against all teams more often. We also get to see these teams at home more often as well. More balance is what everyone was asking for and more variety.
We all got what we asked for BUT at a price.
We played Anaheim on Wednesday and L.A. on Thursday. So we traveled three time zones on Monday night to get to California; adjust to new time zones; and played back to back games. We play again on Saturday night so three west coast games in four days.
Note: L.A. hadn’t played since Sunday so they were well rested. We are banged up and we played like we were tired. The fans out in LA didn’t see our best. But L.A. will come to Verizon Center soon enough and the tables will turn on the schedule.
We can’t complain. We asked for it and we got it.