"Every team will play every other team at least once," commissioner Gary Bettman told reporters after the day's Board of Governors meetings.
"And we did it notwithstanding that this is likely to be the third year in a row with record attendance and the fact that divisional games are better attended than any others we did want to be responsive to the fans."
NYI Fan Central Comments:
Right move by the league. I'm sick of seeing the same four teams in the division this much and as a fan of the entire league it's tough to notice the other conference when you do not play teams for three years in some cases. Islanders problems are their own in terms of attendance and are doing what they can to get folks into the building in a media market that has no real interest in hockey because of the over saturation of the other sports, specifically baseball because that's where the advertising revenue is for the newspapers.