Does the NHL know what was wrong with yesterday's 15 games?

I'm not sure the NHL quite gets how to schedule their games. For the second time this season, fourth since expanding to 30 teams, all 30 teams were playing, giving 15 games. One other was the season opener out of the lockout that cost us a season, and I'm not sure when the other one was.

15 games on a Saturday sounds great for a hockey fan like me with Center Ice. I'd be able to watch a lot of hockey right? Wrong! The games were all scheduled to take place in about a five and a half hour period with the first games at 4:00 PM Pacific (7:00 PM Eastern). The last games started at 7:00 here on the West Coast, and 10:00 back East.

Still, that gives you two games and you can bounce around, right? Maybe not. How many hockey fans don't have a favorite team? Not many. Most have a particular team they follow. Some are more into it than others, some are more fickle to see what's going on elsewhere, but I would say a majority would watch their team for one of those games. That blocks out about two and a half of the five hours, leaving you with a maximum of three hours for flicking around to catch other games. Unless you watched your team's post game show. Or pre-game show. Or both if your team did both yesterday. So, that's even less time to flick around. With most of them starting early, the games dwindled down to fewer and fewer.

A wonderful day of hockey for me used to be it would start at 10:00 AM with a 1:00 PM back east start, maybe the Devils or the Bruins. That would be followed by a 1:00 PM game, then the Hockey Night in Canada game(s) at 4:00 PM and 7:00 PM. If I was lucky, the Kings or Ducks would have a 7:30PM that I could jump over to catch the end of if I watched the second half of the HNIC double header. That would give me hockey from 10:00 AM to 10:00 PM or maybe even 10:30 PM. Basically, 12 hours of hockey. Then, they stopped the 1:00 PM starts. I had a 3 hours gap in the middle of it. I hated it. Still do. Mom liked it. When I was over at my parents' place, she knew she could go shopping then and I'd help her.

Maybe you say they're trying to avoid college football. It's on all day. (started at 9:00 AM Pacific yesterday, and had games starting as late at just after 7:00 PM) Spread the games out so we can watch more, especially with no US national coverage beyond the NHL Network. (Still small time to many people.) Folks trying out the Center Ice package (like on DirecTV's month long preview) might actually get hooked if they think it's on all the time. But if they think the games are always clustered up like yesterday, they might not go for it.