Quote:
Originally Posted by Weitz
If its anything like the NFL they use a computer to spit out about 500 schedules and people go through them to pick the one they deem best.
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The NFL doesn't have to worry about being kicked out of stadiums for basketball games, circuses, ice shows, monster truck pulls, tiddlywinks tournaments, yadda yadda yadda. The NFL gets whatever dates it wants.
From what I can tell, Steve Hatze Petros, the NHL's VP for scheduling, uses computers as much as he can but has to make the final decisions personally. He also has to make manual changes to the schedule when, for instance, a team tells him in August that its arena has taken a booking for a Lady Gaga concert in November. (That can require some really complex reworkings of other teams' road trips, apparently.)
Here's an article from a couple of years ago that discusses parts of the process:
http://blogs.mercurynews.com/sharks/...-for-16-of-21/
