Midnight Hockey Causing Problems for Hockey Fans

This has become a subject of much discussion on twitter the past couple of night. Games aren't starting on time, games for central time zones are an hour and a half later than usual.

First NBC has done us a favor by having all of the game on during the Stanley Cup Playoffs for a second year in a row. For that, most of us are thankful. There's been some really good hockey during the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

Unfortunately, there’s has been some really late night hockey games. Hopefully, that will change during the second round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs when there are fewer games on.

Dan Caesar, St. Louis Post-Dispatch – And because of television, fans of several teams in the Central time zone also have been subject to games that are scheduled to start 90 minutes later than is the norm in the regular season — 8:30 p.m. instead of 7 o’clock. Three contests in the Blues-Wild series have been tabbed for that inconvenient time. The reason: The networks often show an earlier game and hope it will end before the later contest begins. But that 8:30 “start” time isn’t really when the game begins.

The opening faceoff for a weeknight game last week in St. Louis was 8:40. And Wednesday in Minnesota it was 8:45 p.m.

The worst case occurred Tuesday in Chicago, where the Blackhawks’ contest with Nashville didn’t start until 8:45 — 15 minutes after the listed time. The game wasn’t decided until the third overtime period and ended at 1:16 a.m. A normal start of shortly after 7 p.m. would have had that ending about 11:15 p.m. — much more palatable for fans who still had to get home and to bed before getting up for normal weekday activities a few hours later.