DETROIT -- The Detroit Red Wings will play their Original Six foes, along with every other team in the Eastern Conference at least once beginning next season.
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That was pleasant news going around the Wings' locker room Friday afternoon.

"You have to play everyone," defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom said. "You get to go to different cities you're not going to go now."

"It's not a home-and-home, but at least each city will have the opportunity to get to see the Crosbys and the Ovechkins and the star players where they didn't have that luxury the past couple of season," defenseman Chris Chelios said.

"I'm really for playing as many teams as possible," Wings forward Henrik Zetterberg said. "It's fun for us and it's fun for the fans."

"There are so many nice cities over the past three years we haven't gone to," Wings forward Dan Cleary said. "The main thing is It's going to be great for the fans."

On Thursday, the NHL Board of Governors approved a scheduling matrix that will allow teams to play each other at least once per season beginning next season.

Each team will play the teams in its division six times (three home and three away) and continue to play 40 games inside its conference but outside its division (10 opponents) twice at home and twice on the road.

"The monotonous of seeing the Central (Division) so many times can wear on people," Cleary said.

The remaining 18 games in the 82-game schedule will involve teams in each conference playing each team at least once, home or away, with the three remaining games being devoted to inter-conference "at-large" scheduling.

"The game's in a constant stat of change and so is life," Wings coach Mike Babcock said. "If we get to play in the east more, we get to shorten up our travel."

"We've had some great rivalries with Toronto and then we didn't play them for a couple years," Lidstrom said. "Some of the new teams that came you don't have what you had with the other teams."


Its about freaking time. The remaining games should be divided up so that we play more original six teams. It will never happen, but I love seeing those games.

It's stupid that it wasn't like this before. Like there aren't enough games in a season to accomodate this. Oh well, at least they are doing it now.

The schedule might chage again in 09-10 as the Wing's 84-game proposal has been gaining some steam lately.

What is this proposal? I haven't heard about it.

I watched the Wing/Canadians game last night and I couldn't believe it's been 4 years since the Wings played there. The announcers made a good point that they should have a Saturday or Sunday where the original 6 all play each other every year in a rotating format. Have the games at 1pm, 4pm and 7pm on national TV. That would be pretty cool.

What is this proposal? I haven't heard about it.

It was plan put forth by Holland and Devellano - A home and home series against the other conference (30 game), six divisional games (24 games), and three conference games (30 games). The pre-season would be limited to 6 games and training camps might start earlier to accommodate the extra games.

I still have a hard time trying to understand why this proposal didn't go through. It makes perfect sense. The league gets to keep their divisional games they insist upon so much and the fans get to see every team in the league. Seems like a win-win to me.

I would love an Original Six Day.

But that would be too smart for Bettman.

It seems that playing Chicago 8 times a year really isn't going to work out too well for us anyways in the win column. I can't believe it's December and already the best we can do is split with them.