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| (Credit: Ross Bonander/Texas Stars) |
The Texas Stars have their 72-game campaign set for their 15th season in Cedar Park. Forty-eight of the 72 will be against divisional opponents with the remainder against Pacific Division foes. Not every Pacific division team makes the cut as Texas will only play Bakersfield, Coachella, Colorado, San Diego, San Jose and Tucson. Abbotsford and Henderson, two teams the Stars have never played, stay in the 'never have I ever' column for another season. Calgary, who Texas played in their Stockton iteration, and Ontario are also off the schedule.
The scheduled features no Eastern Conference opponents and also, thankfully for this author and the players alike, no 3-in-3 segments. The longest home streak for Texas is a stand from March 29 to April 7, a six-game stint. The longest roadtrip is a tie between two five-game trips out west. The first is November 24 to December 2 and the second is March 16 to 23.
As you would expect in the AHL, the schedule is once again heavily weighted to weekends. As has become commonplace for Texas, they hit the road quite frequently in October and November in favor of home games later in the season. Texas plays just 12 home games from October 13th to December 31st compared to 16 away contests. Then they load up with 18 from the February 1 to April 20, the end of the season, against just 15 away games.
Texas plays all but two home games at their standard 7 PM start. The Sunday contests are the only outliers at 5 PM. Away game timing is all over the place based on time zone, but the notable standouts are two early-season day games in Chicago and Rockford and the always popular Manitoba afternoon weekend starts.
It all kicks off October 13th at home.
Wish we could get the east coast teams once. Understand why but wish we could get em. Will be good to have hockey back!
ReplyDeleteTexas has had some good success with this in the past, getting Syracuse, WBS, Toronto and Laval into the building. It's an especially enticing option to schedule those teams in January to visit Cedar Park. They loves coming to shorts weather in the middle of the winter.
DeleteBut the budgets have to work as well. It can't all be about a golf date. It used to be a little easier of an argument when you could play HOU and SAN in the same trip. Now, it's just Texas.