I’m a real hockey fan and have always wondered why the NHL always caters to the eastern time zone.
The current NHL finals are all played at 8pm no matter if it is in the east coast or west coast.
That means all the games played in New Jersey start at 8pm EST which is 11pm in California.
But if the game is played in California it starts at 5pm California time so that it plays at 8pm in the EST zone.
It just doesn’t seem fair at least split the difference and have the game start earlier in the east and later in the west.
By the way I live in the east (Toronto) but never understood why we must have the start times to cater to us since there are people in the west who like hockey too…
You’ve got your time difference Backwards- when the game starts at 8 EDT, its at 5PM EDT in California. If it started at 8PM PDT in California, the game wouldn’t begin until 11pm EDT, putting it solidly out of prime time for nearly half of the population of the country.
The key thing to remember is that its all about money- think “How can we make sure the majority of the game is in prime time in the most markets”. If you start a game at 8PM EDT, it will run through the entire prime time on the east coast, and will probably run at least 30mins to an hour of Prime time on the west coast.
In fact, the point has been made that by starting its playoff and World Series games at 8:30 EDT (or even EST sometimes) Major League Baseball is making it impossible for school-kids in the east to watch. With extended commercials the games virtually never end before midnight. Thus there are fewer and fewer baseball fans among the young. Although I am a real baseball fan, I have pretty much stopped watching the post-season. They are trading the future for a few extra dollars now.