Lost amidst the trades, trade rumors, free agency rumors, and development camp news is the announcement of the NHL’s regular season schedule, which came out at 11 AM CST today.
The new season for the Dallas Stars will kickoff on Thursday, October 3rd when they take on the Boston Bruins at home. They’ll then have a very quick road trip featuring a back-to-back that weekend in a month that sees them play a lot of Eastern Conference teams. October and February are the heaviest months for opponents from the opposing conference.
November is their make-or-break month. That’s when they’ll face off against almost exclusively Western Conference opponents, including their most amount of divisional games in the schedule.
Here’s a breakdown of the schedule by month:
Here’s some other interesting tidbits about the schedule:
*The end of the home games comes early this season: March 30th. The Stars will finish the season with a three-game road swing through California in early April.
*November sees the Stars play almost solely Western Conference opponents (12 of 13 games). This is also their most division-heavy stretch of the schedule.
*For the first time in forever, the Stars won’t have a New Year’s Eve matchup at home. That’s because they’ll be hosting the Nashville Predators at the Cotton Bowl for the Winter Classic on January 1st at noon (subject to change, dependent on weather, of course.)
*Dallas will have their CBA-mandated 5-day break in January in advance of the All-Star Break. This marks their longest break, spanning eight days total from January 18th to 26th in which we will see no Stars hockey.
*Their back-to-back sets are fairly evenly distributed throughout the schedule, with the majority of those being road-and-road sets (nine of their 15 total back-to-backs.)
For the full schedule, check out these two links from the Dallas Stars website where they have it in calendar form and list form.