Hooray! We’ve got a schedule!
While many of you have given your first impressions in the previous post, here are a few other tidbits about the schedule.
– Let’s call out the elephant in the room…..There is a particular car race on February 26th. There is also a home game that day, as the Admirals will entertain the Rampage. Sorry Todd. Better luck next year. Hey, Bert Blyleven got into the Hall eventually…maybe next year will be your year?
– Yes. April looks to be brutal. 9 games in 15 days, and 7 of them in a row on the road…but only one set of games on back-to-back nights, and that’s once they return to the midwest to close out the season. They’ll cover a lot of miles on that trip, but they shouldn’t have any days where they’ll be playing the same day that they are travelling. So that’s nice.
– The AHL got rid of the 4-games-in-5-days stretches….but they kept the 3-in-3’s. And the Admirals have 9 3-in-3’s this year. Of interest: 8 of those stretches have two games as home dates. The last one is the closing weekend of the season, with one home date.
– Sunday December 18th, the Admirals host Peoria. They won’t play again until the day after Christmas. 7 off-days. I’ll just go ahead and pencil in ‘caption contest’ during that week.
– No odd one-off travel dates. No home game Friday, and then game in San Antonio on Saturday. I don’t book the flights, but it looks like there should only be 7 trips requiring air travel this season.
– The Admirals will play road games in different cities on back-to-back days three times. Lake Erie/Hamilton, Lake Erie/Toronto, and then Rockford/Chicago the last weekend of the season.
– Day hockey anyone? 1:30 start at home against Chicago on Saturday November 12th. 10am at Peoria Tuesday January 24th. And early Sunday games at Charlotte (11/27) and Houston (2/5).
– I thought the team did well last year with 75% of their home games on a Friday, Saturday, or Sunday. Somehow, they managed to get a better percentage, as 32 ofo 38 home games (84%) will be on those weekend dates. Just 15 of the 76 full season games are M, T, W, or Th.
– The schedule-makers did a pretty nice job breaking up the division games this season. Of course, with 44 games against division foes this year, that’s a tough task. But there are only two stretches all season where the Admirals will play over three straight games against division foes.
– How many calendar weeks (Sunday through Saturday) of the regular season will the Admirals not have at least one home game (Excluding opening night in Peoria)? Three. Once for the Abbotsford trip in October, once in March, and once in April. (Yes, I know I’m fudging the numbers a bit…a more useful stat would be weeks that go Monday-Sunday, but that number isn’t as aesthetically pleasing)
– Speaking of Abbotsford, three out of the four games will be played before December 1st. But they’ll re-appear at the Bradley Center in February.
– By December 10th, the Admirals will have played 22 games. 6 of them will have been against the Wolves.
– Half of the season series against Rockford will take place after March 1st.
To be honest, I expected a lot worse. Yes, April appears to be unpleasant, but I don’t have a lot to complain about here outside of the usual gripes (lack of Eastern Conference, etc). The team isn’t gone for a long time, and they are never home for a really long time. Seems like as balanced of an unbalanced AHL schedule that we could hope for. Lots of chances to travel on weekends to Rockford and Rosemont (and Peoria if you get good gas mileage on your vehicle).
Feel free to weigh in on the schedule in the comments section.
Admirals Roundtable 
The schedule looks pretty good. I would like to see more games against Toronto and Hamilton. I could live with 10 games against Chicago, Rockford and Peoria instead of 12.
Yep, go figure. 12 times in 16 years. I’m no longer surprised. Even worse, the Admirals have four home games scheduled on the same afternoon as a Packer regular season game. I’m certainly not a Packer fan, but I hate to see the Admirals lose ticket sales due to poor scheduling. For now, the football games are all noon kickoffs, but they could be flexed to 3pm and overlap with a 4-5pm Admiral faceoff.
I’m hoping for something special to happen on January 24. Milwaukee at Peoria at 10am. Nashville at Chicago that night. Could we see a player get called up to dress in two games in a single day?? Will the Admirals bus bring the boys to watch the game at the United Center on the way home? I think that would be a nice motivational tool to remind the guys what they are working towards.
Nice Blyleven reference, Ryan. I was a wide-eyed naive little kid in when he helped win a World Series with my hometown Pittsburgh Pirates in 1979. However, I was more of a Kent Tekulve fan back then.
Not digging all the weekend games! I work so many weekends!!!! Oh well, the nice thing is I work 3rd shift, so as long as I’m not working overtime, I can usually go to the games and still have plenty of time to make it to work (as long as we don’t have anymore double overtime games…right Texas?)
Speaking of Peoria…anybody thinking of heading there opening night on October 9th? I wouldn’t mind taking a little road trip to open the season, and it would be nice to get a group of us together in the same section.
me and my fiance are thinking about going to the season opener in peoria. hoping to get tickets right behind the bench
and mark is oct 8th but i bet others will catch on to it also