The NHL appears to have been tinged by the long-standing report that the Finals would have an ungodly long, nine day wait for the Finals to start if the Wings close things out on Wednesday. E.J. Hradek of ESPN has the story:
According to multiple sources, if the Pittsburgh Penguins and Detroit Red Wings can wrap up their respective Conference final series by Wednesday night, the Stanley Cup finals likely would start on Saturday, May 30 in Detroit. In this scenario, Game 2 would be played on Sunday, May 31.
For the past several days, the league has been working behind the scenes with NBC, which has limited prime time real estate to devote to the Cup finals due to important “sweeps” week programming and the Tonight Show re-launch with new host Conan O’Brien.
The possible change would spare the league an embarrassing, television-created, eight-day hiatus and the competitive nature of the playoffs wouldn’t be compromised by an unusually long layoff for both clubs.
Thank God. The two days in a row to start the series will still tick off quite a few people, but at least they avoid this craziness we’ve been talking about for awhile.
The series will likely look like this:
- Saturday, May 30th
- Sunday, May 31st
- Tuesday, June 2nd (VERSUS)
- Thursday, June 4th (VERSUS)
- Saturday, June 6th
- Monday/Tuesday, June 8th/9th
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