Dallas Stars fans will have a little bit more hockey to look forward to starting in the 2026-27 season.
The new Collective Bargaining Agreement as approved by the NHL and NHL Players Association will, among other things, introduce the addition of two more regular season games to the schedule. That means Stars fans will have 42 home games instead of the current 41, as well as another road game to equal 84 total regular season games.
With that will come a reduction of preseason games, of which the Stars are scheduled to play six this upcoming season. The NFL has already implemented a change that added one more regular season game and eliminated one of four preseason games from the old schedule. At the end of the day, leagues are more interested in making money on a regular season match-up than playing to a semi-full crowd at a preseason game.
This change will also allow more divisional match-ups. Currently at eight teams per division, each team plays 26 divisional games, meaning four games against five divisional opponents and three against the other two. With the addition of two more games, the NHL can now fully even out the schedule for everyone.
Teams will now get the chance to play all division opponents four times, each team from the other in-conference division three times, and each team from the opposite conference twice. This makes everything equal and makes sure that no major division rivalry suffers from only three meetings per season (meaning only one game at one of the locations).
For Stars fans, the change means an equal opportunity to see the challenging (and often hated) Central Division teams blow through Dallas twice a season, but also means two more tough games per year in what is usually an ultra-competitive division.
And at the end of the day, more meaningful hockey is never a bad thing.
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