The full schedules are expected to be announced today, but Hurricanes fans learned yesterday that they will open the season at home against the Panthers on Friday October 10. They also learned that the three "wildcard" teams from the West whom the Canes will play twice will be Phoenix, Anaheim and St. Louis.
This is the third consecutive time the Canes have opened the season at home, and the first time that it will be a divisional opponent.
Carolina fans may remember that FSN South signed a deal with the Hurricanes, pledging to broadcast 65 games this coming season, up from 60 in 2007-08. They also have pledged to broadcast "at least 70" Charlotte Bobcats NBA games. I did some research and discovered that last season, the two teams had simultaneous games 34 times, and each team had 44 nights when they were the only one playing. There were an additional four times where one team played early and one team played late. Supposing the common dates were split down the middle, that gave each team 61 broadcastable games. Including the "doubleheaders", there could have been 65 games for each team. All of this is, of course, using last year's schedules as a template. In any event, it doesn't seem possible for one channel to commit to as many games as they're committed to.
I've written to FSN South, asking them how they plan to honor both commitments when the schedules probably won't accomodate 135 different broadcastable games. I haven't received an answer.
The NHL also "officially" announced that the Winter Classic '09 will indeed be in Wrigley Field on New Year's Day between the Red Wings and Blackhawks. This came as news to nobody. I think there's some people who are holding out hope for a Winter Classic in Raleigh. It isn't gonna happen in our lifetimes, and if it does, I'll gladly eat crow.
The full 2008-09 schedules will be released at some point today.
Thursday, July 17, 2008
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
2 comments:
"Holding out hope" and "wishing against all odds" are two different things.
A winter classic in a Southern locale? That, my friend, would be pretty awesome!
I thought I had read that in the Triangle, Canes games would receive priority over the Bobcats. In other places, if there is Sports South in addition to FSN then one team would be there while the other would be on FSN. I don't remember the source, though.
Post a Comment