Christmas Eve is a festive time, but boring time, for hardcore sports fans. The only major North American sporting event the entire day was this year’s Hawaii Bowl for college football. It was a great game but it was the only option for any sports entertainment all day. We could only watch “Elf” so many times before the 8:00 pm EST kick off.
In my post-Christmas Dinner social medial scroll, you know the kind you do to avoid conversation with your family after consuming close to 10,000 calories, an interesting tweet popped up from Mike Commodore. What if the NHL purposely put a few games on December 24th since nothing else sports wise is on? The last time the NHL had a scheduled Christmas Eve game was back in 1972. Hockey fans would love it, plus sports fans in general would watch anything that was on since there would be no competition.
The tweet even kept players in mind by suggesting localized matchups. For example, two proposed matchups were New Jersey Devils vs Philadelphia Flyers and New York Rangers vs New York Islanders. There would be no air travel so players could be home in time and still be around their families. Even if you’re not a fan of any of those teams playing hockey fans would still watch and sports fans in general would watch because of the lack of options.
It seems like a great idea, and one that is considerate to player’s and team personnel themselves. With the NBA off on Christmas Eve there would be no potential conflict for arenas that host teams in both leagues. Our immediate concern is how it would affect the NHL roster freeze. Then we remembered the roster freeze takes effect on December 20th, so having a game played during the roster freeze is nothing new.
When we went to check the roster freeze is where we found our potential problem. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are two dates the league has no official activity. Teams aren’t even allowed to have practice. Not having games on Christmas Eve was never a matter of the league skipping over the day as much as that specific date being a negotiated day off between the league and its players. Changing that would require the NHLPA to agree. With those dates set in stone as part of the CBA any potential “Christmas Eve games” might have to wait to be negotiated in the next labor talks.
Then there’s the potential flaw in the logic of “the NHL would be the only sport playing”. The NFL does schedule Christmas Eve games when it can be fit into their schedule. For example, if Christmas Eve fell on what would be would a normal NFL game day (Thursday, Sunday or Monday) any potential hockey games would be competing either the NFL. Even if it’s not one of those days but close enough (i.e. Saturday) the NFL would most likely adjust their schedule.
That immediately crumbles some of the logic behind the NHL adjusting their schedule. This year the NFL’s Christmas Day games were a streaming exclusive to Netflix so there might be the argument that that could make the NHL the only non-streaming Christmas Eve sports option. All of these points mean nothing if the players don’t agree to taking away one of their days off and that’s not something we see happening unless the NHL makes it financially worth it for them to be skating while Santa Claus is coming to town.
The tweeter of the idea seems ready to negotiate. In another post he speculates about if fans would attend games on Christmas Eve. Judging by the fans who came out on Christmas Day for the NBA that doesn’t seem anywhere near a problem as the players union standing in their way.