Carolina Hurricanes vs New Jersey Devils Playoff Schedule set

It’ll be an Easter matinee start for the Canes versus the Devils

While Wednesday Night’s to Montreal wasn’t fun and could have caused Thursday Night’s games to be more fun with Columbus having a chance to win their way in, it did accomplish one thing: it set the entire playoff field and allowed the NHL to go ahead and—eventually—set a schedule for all the first round series.

A few hours after the Canadiens clinched their spot, the NHL announced the first two series starting on Saturday with the promise the remainder of the schedule would follow. For once, instead of waiting till the middle of the night, they went ahead and got the schedule out during the day time to allow for people to have time to prepare.

The Canes reported their own schedule out first.

In a slightly more readable form, it appears like this:

• Game 1: Sunday, April 20 @ 3 p.m. (Lenovo Center)—FanDuel Sports Net/ESPN
• Game 2: Tuesday, April 22 @ 6 p.m. (Lenovo Center)—FanDuel Sports Net/ESPN
• Game 3: Friday, April 25 @ 8 p.m. (Prudential Center)—FanDuel Sports Net/TBS
• Game 4: Sunday, April 27 @ 3:30 p.m. (Prudential Center)-FanDuel Sports Net/TBS
• Game 5 (If needed): Tuesday, April 29 @ TBD (Lenovo Center)-FanDuel Sports Net/TBD
• Game 6 (If needed): Friday, May 2 @ TBD (Prudential Center)-FanDuel Sports Net/TBD
• Game 7 (If needed): Sunday, May 4 @ TBD (Lenovo Center)-FanDuel Sports Net/TBD

The entire NHL first round playoff schedule is also out and there are a few oddities there. It also easily explains why Canes are playing at 6 PM on Tuesday—for some reason the Tampa Bay Lightening/Florida Panthers series isn’t starting off until Tuesday, and since it’s in the Eastern Time Zone they couldn’t get away with waiting till a later start time. So the Canes get the funky 6 PM start time on Tuesday so the Florida teams can start at 8:30.

Because the NHL.

All of this brings about the fact that it’ll be an Easter Sunday in Raleighwood to start the Stanley Cup Playoffs. The date and time should bring some interesting fashion choices in the stands as more than a few will likely be coming from other events straight to Lenovo Center.

Another quirk with the schedule is the two day break that appears twice, and then the Canes/Devils doing a Friday Night 8 PM to Sunday 3:30 PM turnaround between games three and four. It almost guarantees that there will have to be a use of both goalies in this series as Freddie Andersen has yet to play in a back to back contest since his injury return, and trying to ask him to do that turnaround out of the blue will be difficult.

Obviously games five through seven are left open due to how it might work with other series. As soon as it’s known what games are needed on those dates, the times and networks will be announced.