2009-10 Schedule

So the schedule was released yesterday and the first thing that everyone looks for is the home opener. The boys in Orange (lets hope it is Orange and not Black) open the season on the road in Raleigh against the Canes then travel to North Jersey to take on the trap before arriving home.

The home opener will be against our renewed rivalry with the Caps. This will be the beginning of a beautiful relationship between Pronger and Ovechkin. The following home game will bring in the cross state rivals and introduce Pronger to Cindy and Malkin.

The first month will be very important to get off on the right foot. The Flyers have 7 home games and 4 games on the road. The longest road trip will occur from Dec. 23 - Jan. 3 with the Flyers playing 6 games on the road (including a little trip to Fenway). The longest home stand will occur from Jan. 19 - Jan. 30 with the Flyers playing 6 games. There are 14 back to back occasions in this schedule (I haven't checked other teams schedules but that is a lot of back to back nights). With the Olympics happening this year the schedule was condensed and it shows. There are very few times that the team has more than a couple of days off.

Here are the monthly breakdowns in games.

October - 11
November - 13
December - 15
January - 14
February - 7 (Olympic Break)
March - 16
April - 6 (Playoffs begin)

This appears to be a fairly balanced game schedule when you really look at it. When looking at March you see they will be playing more than 50% of the days. Lets hope that they are hitting their stride at this time and we are relatively healthy coming back from the Olympic break. In all reality I hope only a few Flyers play in the Olympics for selfish reasons. For the Flyers they have a break from Sunday February 14 - Monday March 1 (two weeks for you keeping track at home).

It is still too earlier to determine what the toughest stretch of the season will be with all of the movement in the offseason but my feeling is they need to start off strong and not stub their collective toe like last year.