NHL reschedules 95 games into Olympic break in February

The NHL has released a revised schedule that will allow all 32 teams to finish the 2021-22 season by April 29, as originally planned.

The new schedule, which was announced by the league on Wednesday afternoon, will see new dates for 98 games that had been postponed between November 18 and January 18. Also, the league has changed the dates of 23 games on the pre-existing schedule to accommodate for these newly rescheduled games.

The new schedule along with a list of all of the league’s rescheduled games can be viewed in this release published by the NHL.

The NHL had originally intended to support players representing their countries at the 2022 Olympic Games in Beijing, but both the league and the Players’ Association agreed to pull out due to China’s strict restrictions on isolation periods for positive COVID results.

As a result, the NHL had a 16-day window between February 7 and 22 without any games that they ultimately used to reschedule the games that had been postponed earlier in the season.

This part of the schedule will be busy for the Canadian teams. Due to Canada heightening COVID restrictions in December and January, the NHL postponed a handful of Canadian team games with the hope that they could be played at a later date when fans were allowed back in the stadium.

For example, the Edmonton Oilers had nine games postponed. They’ll make up eight of them between February 8 and 20.