I suppose one concern with playing the same team so many times is that you start focusing on matchups. Learning about other teams tendencies is maybe not a big factor in player development and could be misleading. As pointed out, it also makes comparing against stats from other teams less meaningful. Which shouldn't matter in development but does when assessing trade value etc.
I do wish they played more games as getting used to the grind of a long regular season has to be an important learning for some of these guys. But people that know much more about hockey than me seem to be fine with it.
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