This afternoon, teams around the National Hockey League released their 2026-27 schedules in unison. The New Jersey Devils released a mini-production starring Ken Daneyko and Rachel Herzog (which was actually pretty good), but it was a little short on the details. With a short glimpse, you might only see that the Devils have an oddly imbalanced schedule that features all games against the Rangers before New Year’s and all games against the Hurricanes after the All-Star Break. But looking deeper into
the press release and the calendar, more significant issues arise. Let’s start with the most basic one from the press release. How much of a problem will back-to-backs be? They will be somewhat annoying at times, but not awful.
Overall, New Jersey is scheduled for 13 back-to-back sets in 2026-27, down from 15 last season. The team’s breakdown for back-to-back sets includes two home/home, two home/away, four away/home and five away/away.
I have a slight problem with this, mostly on the road bias of back-to-backs. 11 of the 13 sets feature a road game, which doesn’t seem great. But it’s only a slight problem that is made better by the fact that the Devils have a positive rest bias in their schedule. Per Micah McCurdy of HockeyViz, the Devils have nine instances of playing (expectedly) tired teams and only seven instances of playing rested teams while tired. In all, it’s more middle-of-the-road than the Devils usually get from the NHL. Last season, they had the fifth-toughest rest imbalance.
If you take a look at the schedule itself, more problems become apparent, but these are problems that plague the fan far more than the player. The Devils’ press release notes that the “home schedule includes 15 weekend dates with two Friday games, nine Saturday contests and four games slated on Sundays.” However, that is in comparison to fifteen Saturday road games, three Friday road games, and four Sunday road games. That’s 15 weekend home games to 21 on the road.
As for matinees, the Devils’ release notes that seven of those 15 home weekend games are prior to 5:00 PM. Those are:
- Saturday, Oct. 10 vs. Vancouver (3:30)
- Saturday, Oct. 24 vs. Los Angeles (3:30)
- Friday, Nov. 27 vs. Calgary (1:00)
- Saturday, Dec. 19 vs. Boston (12:00)
- Saturday, Jan. 9 vs. Chicago (12:00)
- Saturday, Feb. 20 vs. Buffalo (3:00)
- Sunday, Apr. 4 vs. Florida (4:30)
The Devils also have no games scheduled at 5:00, with their earliest non-matinee game being the home finale on April 10 at 6:00 versus Pittsburgh. In comparison, the Devils have the following road matinees (Eastern time listed):
- Saturday, Oct. 17 at Washington (1:00)
- Saturday, Dec. 5 at Pittsburgh (3:00)
- Saturday, Dec. 12 at Boston (1:00)
- Friday, Jan. 1 at Anaheim (4:00)
- Saturday, Jan. 30 at Calgary (3:30)
- Sunday, Jan. 31 at Seattle (4:00)
- Sunday, Feb. 21 at Chicago (3:30)
- Sunday, Feb. 28 at Minnesota (3:30)
The Devils also play the Carolina Hurricanes at 5:00 on Saturday, April 3. So, that’s nine truly early starts on weekend road games to only seven for weekend home games. What is most confusing to me there is that three of the four Sunday home games the Devils play are scheduled at 7:00 PM compared to just one of four road Sunday games. So if you’re a fan who likes to attend games on the weekend, this year’s schedule is a particularly poor one for you.
Here are the games broken down by day of the week:
- Sunday: Eight total (4H, 4A)
- Monday: Five total (3H, 2A)
- Tuesday: 19 total (11H, 8A)
- Wednesday: Seven total (3H, 4A)
- Thursday: 16 total (10H, 6A)
- Friday: Five total (2H, 3A)
- Saturday: 24 total (9H, 15A)
In all, Saturday is the most imbalanced day by raw number at -6 home games while Thursday is tied with Saturday for the most imbalanced by percentage of games, with Thursday being 62.5% at home and Saturday being 62.5% on the road. 64.3% of the home schedule takes place from Monday through Thursday compared to just 47.6% of the road schedule. That shouldn’t have much impact on the players, but it is terrible for the fans and the businesses around The Rock. Going to dinner before the Devils game? Hope you have some weekdays off. Want to go to the bars around the arena and take a train or an Uber home? You’ll only get 12 really solid opportunities for that.
There’s another home imbalance issue that really annoyed me. This year, the All-Star Weekend takes place on February 5 and 6. The Devils are off between February 4 and 12, but their gap between home games is extreme.
- Prior to the All-Star break: Four-game Western road trip from January 24 to February 3.
- After the All-Star break: Three-game road trip from February 13 to February 18
So, with the last home game before the break being against Seattle on January 26, and the first home game back being against Buffalo on February 20, the Devils go 24 days between home games. But it gets worse. The Devils do not have consecutive home games after the All-Star break until March 18-23, playing 14 road games to four home games from January 28 through March 13. That’s nearly two months: 50 days, not including the dates of the games, between homestands.
If the Devils are having a good season on the ice, they are rewarded with nine home games to just three on the road to finish the season, but they have to earn the comfort of taking their rest there by winning throughout the season. I look forward to that end of things if Sunny Mehta and Sheldon Keefe can get a playoff team out there.
Before finishing here, let’s also take a look at how clustered some of the divisional games are for each opponent, with home games in bold.
- Carolina: Feb. 23, Mar. 13, Mar. 29, Apr. 3
- Columbus: Nov. 23, Nov. 25, Jan. 7, Feb. 26
- Islanders: Oct. 3, Nov. 7, Jan 16, Apr. 8 (gold star for actually spacing them out)
- Rangers: Oct. 15, Dec. 7, Dec. 15, Dec. 22 (truly awesome work)
- Philadelphia: Oct. 1, Jan. 23, Feb. 13, Mar. 23
- Pittsburgh: Dec. 5, Mar. 18, Mar. 25, Apr. 10
- Washington: Oct. 17, Nov. 12, Nov. 14, Jan. 24
Of all the Metropolitan matchups, only the Islanders and Flyers feature schedules that lack games within a week of each other. Every other divisional matchup is heavily clustered.
So, as far as the balance of the schedule goes from the standpoint of the players, there aren’t any huge alarm bells that go off for me here. But for New Jersey Devils fans, this is an extremely weekday-heavy home schedule that has locals staying in front of the television a lot more than they should want to on the weekends. Adding the huge gap in home games around the All-Star Weekend and the odd rivalry clusters on top of that, I give the 2025-26 Devils schedule an F grade for the local fan.
But what do you think about the schedule? Leave your thoughts in the comments below, and thanks for reading.
