Some Quick Notes On The Devils 2009-10 Schedule

by Carlos Figueiredo
Now that the schedule has been released, we can start to break it down a little and see just what we have in store for the upcoming season. Feel free to leave your thoughts on the schedule in the comments section.
 

The Devils longest homestand is 5 games, Dec. 9th thru Dec. 18th. They face the Hurricanes, Panthers, Flyers, Canadiens and Senators on that homestand.

Their longest road trip of the season comes exactly a month later, Jan. 9th thru Jan. 18th. That also consists of 5 games, a trip that takes them to Montreal, NYR, Phoenix, Colorado and the Islanders. Not too bad of a trip considering two of the five games are in NY.

The most interesting part of the schedule come in late January/early February. They face the Maple Leafs in Toronto on Feb. 2nd, then come back home to play them on Feb. 5th for a home-and-home. They also face Toronto at home on Jan 29th, meaning they will face off against the Maple Leafs in 3 of 4 games during that stretch. The other home-and-home comes against the Flyers, and that comes right after the Devils face the Rangers after the Toronto H&H. So in a 13 day stretch, the Devils schedule looks like this:

Jan 29 – Maple Leafs @ Devils
Jan 31 – Kings @ Devils
Feb 2 – Devils @ Maple Leafs
Feb 5 – Maple Leafs @ Devils
Feb 6 – Devils @ Rangers
Feb 8 – Devils @ Flyers
Feb 10 – Flyers @ Devils

Should make for a very interesting few weeks to start the new year.

Good news for people who can’t stay up late: The Devils play only four games this season that have a start time of later then 8PM ET. They play the Blackhawks in Chicago at 8:30PM on New Years Eve (so we’ll be up and drunk anyway), and then play in Phoenix on Thursday, Jan 19th (9PM ET start). They come back from the Olympic break with a west coast trip that takes them to San Jose (10:30PM ET), Calgary (9:00PM ET) and Edmonton (this game is an 8PM ET start though).

The last five games of the Devils 2009-10 regular season come against teams who had a combined record of 188-180-42 last season. They have a three game road trip to Carolina, Atlanta and Florida before they close out the season at home with games on Saturday, April 10th against the Islanders and Sunday, April 11th against the Sabres.

UPDATE: Great post by Dirk Hoag over at On The Forecheck on the travel distances and number of back-to-back games for each team in the league. The Devils travel only 31,340 miles this season, the 3rd least in the league, but that is an INCREASE of 2051 miles over last season. The toughest part comes in back-to-back games, where they play 19 sets….tied for most in the league with Chicago. They played 18 sets last season.

What do you think of the schedule? Feel free to comment on how you think the season will play out.

and LET’S GO DEVILS!

Tags: New Jersey Devils, NHL, Schedule