7:00 or 7:30 local start time?

[cleveland408]

7 30 start times suck so hard.

It makes pacific time games unwatchable

4 PM start times also suck. Makes it literally unwatchable for people coming home from school/work to watch eastern games.

 

[Kane One]

The games start at 7:05 and 7:35 pretty much on the dot all the time. The reason for the extra 5 minutes is to give the TV and Radio a few minutes to set the stage for the game

Rangers start at 7:10, I think.

 

[The Macho King]

Rangers start at 7:10, I think.

Tampa is 7:38 on the dot.

Edit: Tonight being an exception, obviously.

 

[Quid Pro Clowe]

730 is preferred since that's when I usually get done with work.

 

[Martyros]

From LA's side, I can assure you that traffic is horribad close to game time.

 

[redcard]

From LA's side, I can assure you that traffic is horribad close to game time.

I can see staples from my office window. Takes me an hour.

 

[Islanders1932]

The Islanders have a bunch of games starting at 7:30 this year because of the move to Brooklyn. The Islanders have fans all over. The large part of their fan base is 45 or more minutes away so it gives the fans more time to get to the games is what I'm assuming. However, I can't quite figure out why they stuck to 7 p.m. games during the week, if anything I thought it would be reversed.

 

[ElGuapo]

It's more like 7:08/7:38, and by "setting the stage" you surely mean showing some extra commercials.

Razor the Stars color man has said that he wishes they'd just start right at 7:30 when they go on air. I think you have it right. It's all about more commercials.

 

[talkinaway]

Bruins are usually sometime between 7:08 and 7:10, with a 7 PM official time. For a metro area, the traffic WITHIN Boston isn't bad, and the public transportation is...well, let's call it easily accessible, since I don't want to say "good". It's getting to Boston in the morning and leaving Boston at night that's a pain - and, as such, someone working in Boston can actually make their commute easier by seeing a game.

It doesn't disturb me that they drop the puck "late". Anyone who's watched more than one game of hockey knows that this is what we do. If you want to watch a few minutes of pregame and a bunch of commercials, tune in at 7. If you don't want pregame, tune in at 7:08.

Frankly, hockey's nice in that commercials are easy to predict: after 14, 10, and 6 minutes, with 90 seconds, or 3 clicks of my fast forward button, each. It's the most DVR friendly sport around, as long as you disconnect from spoilers. For that reason, I don't really mind stuff like the ads on the boards, or the announcers mentioning the DraftKings power play. They gotta get paid somehow.

 

[Holocene]

Rangers start at 7:10, I think.

7:08 or 7:38

 

[Siamese Dream]

It doesn't disturb me that they drop the puck "late". Anyone who's watched more than one game of hockey knows that this is what we do. If you want to watch a few minutes of pregame and a bunch of commercials, tune in at 7. If you don't want pregame, tune in at 7:08.

In British sports we do the pregame before the actual advertised start time on the official website, imagine that