The NHL released it's schedule for the 2019-20 season on Tuesday, possibly the league's last non-shortened campaign before the potential lockout in 2020-21.
The defending champion St. Louis Blues will host the 2018 Cup-winning Washington Capitals in the opener on Wednesday, Oct. 2 in a contest that will see the home side raise its first ever Stanley Cup banner.
Four games in total will go down on the season's opening night, with the Ottawa Senators visiting the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Edmonton Oilers hosting the Vancouver Canucks and the Vegas Golden Knights facing the San Jose Sharks at T-Mobile Arena.
Pretty juicy opening slate of contests to kick off the 1,271-game regular season, which will conclude Saturday, April 4 2020.
Participating in the 2019 NHL Global Series will be the Chicago Blackhawks and Philadelphia Flyers , who will be playing a regular-season game in Prague, Czech Republic on Friday, Oct. 4 at O2 Arena. The Buffalo Sabres and Tampa Bay Lightning , meanwhile, will square off at Ericsson Globe in Stockholm, Sweden in mid-November.
The Calgary Flames and Winnipeg Jets will play at Mosaic Stadium in Regina, Saskatchewan in the 2019 Tim Hortons NHL Heritage Classic, while the Dallas Stars and Nashville Predators will be featured in the New Year's Day Bridgestone NHL Winter Classic outdoors at Cotton Bowl Stadium in Dallas.
Some interesting and notable tidbits from the 2019-20 schedule:
The Blackhawks only have eight home games on Fridays and Saturdays combined.
The Jets have only three Saturday home games, with one of them hosted in Regina, Sask.
The Flyers have 17 back-to-back games, while the Devils have 16.
The Wild only have eight home games before American Thanksgiving.
The Maple Leafs' longest home stand will be four games and doesn't happen until March, while the Penguins' longest is also four games — the team's first four contests of the season.
Mathematician Micah Blake McCurdy posted an excellent breakdown of the scheduling, which favours Carolina the most and Philadelphia the least:
And we have to hand it to the San Jose Sharks and their social media team for posting easily the best schedule release from a team Twitter account on Tuesday:
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