The quest to repeat for the Stanley Cup starts October 12.
It was announced Wednesday afternoon that the NHL schedule for the 2022-23 season was released. Below is the schedule in calendar form, red for away games and blue for home games. All times are local to the location of the game.
We have a schedule folks! #GoAvsGo pic.twitter.com/9E8p5Edm6K
— z – Mile High Hockey (@MileHighHockey) July 6, 2022
For the Colorado Avalanche, their 82-game stretch begins October 12 at home against the Chicago Blackhawks. They will face the Hawks for the second season in a row to start the season, both on home ice. The home opener will be a special one, as the new Stanley Cup Champions banner will be raised to the rafters in Ball Arena pre-game.
Some other notable matchups on the schedule include having two home games against the newest NHL team, the Seattle Kraken. They only played once at Ball Arena last season, with the Avs winding up on top 4-3. Now, Avs fans have the chance to watch the Kraken and Philipp Grubauer at Ball Arena on October 21 and March 5.
Photo by Michael Martin/NHLI via Getty Images
On November 4 and 5, the Columbus Blue Jackets will travel across the pond with the Avs to play in the NHL Global Series in Tampere, Finland at the Nokia Arena. It’ll be the second time the Avs participate in the Global Series, the first being against Matt Duchene just after being traded to the Ottawa Senators in Stockholm, Sweden. It will be a stretch of just five games in two weeks for the Avs between the end of October and after the Global Series in November.
Photo by Nils Petter Nilsson/Ombrello/Getty Images
The action quickly ramps up though with 15 games filling up the calendar for December. It includes a five-game homestand, the biggest one of the season, leading up to the Christmas break. The longest road trip is technically six games from October through the end of the Global Series, with the Avs playing six games away from Ball Arena in that span.
Excluding the Global Series, the Avs have a couple of four-game road trips to Eastern Canada and the West Coast in March and April respectively. In the four-game road trip in April, a unique quirk to the schedule is a pair of back-to-back games on the road against the San Jose Sharks on April 4 and 6. The season then ends a week later on home ice against the Winnipeg Jets on April 13.
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The most intriguing part of the schedule comes in the middle of February. The Avs will face the Stanley-Cup finalists Tampa Bay Lightning twice in the span of a week, with the President’s Trophy-winning Florida Panthers splitting the two games. They face the Bolts away on February 9 and then host them on February 14 for what some may say is a match made in heaven. The Panthers host the Avs on February 11 between the two games.
Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images
We are back to a “normal schedule” after a couple of funky years of schedule thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Stanley Cup will be awarded at a more common time some time at the beginning of June once the playoffs begin in the middle of April. Single-game tickets will go on sale July 18 at 10:00 AM, and presale information for full, half, and partial season ticket members will go out the day before.
With training camp and preseason in early September leading into the start of the Cup defense, it all doesn’t seem too far away. How are we liking the schedule folks? Make your way-too-early records predictions in the comments below – October can’t come soon enough for us all!