So I was curious as to if this happens normally to one or two teams possibly through the first 6 weeks of the season.
I went over each team's schedule for the 2018-19 season to see if this was a common scheduling strategy or something. And to keep things comparable I included all games up until last night's games, Nov 7th.
16 Games Played
ANA, CGY, TOR, VAN
15 Games Played
BUF, CAR, CHI, COL, CLB, DAL, DET, EDM, MTL, NSH, NYR, NYR, OTT, PHI, SJS, TBL, VGK
14 Games Played
BOS, LA, MIN, NYI, PIT, WSH, WPG
13 Games Played
ARI, NJD, STL
11 Games Played
FLA
So last season to start the Flames once again tied for the highest GP in a similar time span, but another thing you will notice is there is no anomaly. There is no team that is weirdly sitting at a higher number of games.
At the end of the day, every team plays 82 games and the early schedule doesn't necessarily affect your final standings at the end of the season, BUT the point I am highlighting is that the Flames have a pretty peculiar scheduling start to this season.
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