I became a little obsessed with this subject a year ago, when it seemed as if the Wild and Timberwolves were playing on the same night an awful lot. For the entire 2015-16 season, it happened 33 times — including seven shared home dates. That was a lot by comparison to 2014-15, when the teams played on the same date only 24 times.
It turns out we hadn't seen anything yet.
The Wolves, who released their schedule Thursday, and Wild play on the same date a whopping 41 times this season — half the 82-game schedule for both teams. Included in that are 14 shared home dates, meaning they will directly compete during more than one-third of their home dates.
There's a particularly comical stretch of Feb. 8, 10, 12 and 14 when both the Wild and Wolves are at home on all four dates.
Granted: The crossover audience for these teams is not huge. There are some folks — such as myself — who pay keen attention to both. There are others who at least follow both casually. But overall, the NBA and NHL audiences are fairly different.
Still, it will create those feast-or-famine TV viewing nights I wrote about last year, when often both or neither are playing. It's not likely to thrill either organization to have to go head-to-head 14 times for the ever-stretched dollar of the local sports fan — particularly in a year when both teams are intriguing.
So why did this happen?
Some of this can be explained by the Twin Cities being in the minority when it comes to having NBA and NHL teams in different arenas. There are 15 markets that have franchises in both leagues. Of those, the arena is shared in 10 markets: New York, Brooklyn, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Toronto, Chicago, Denver, Dallas and Los Angeles. In the other five metro area markets, it is not: In Minneapolis-St. Paul, Phoenix, the Bay Area, Detroit and Miami the NBA and NHL teams play in different buildings.
Leagues make the schedules, with input from teams and a ton of other factors in play. When teams don't share a building, that makes it possible to play on the same night at the same time at home, with far fewer date restrictions. Sure, both Xcel Energy Center and Target Center hold concerts, high school tournaments and other events during the NHL/NBA seasons, but neither is dealing off the bat with 41 conflicts with another team's league's home games.
In Boston, where the Bruins and Celtics play at TD Garden, they have 32 dates on which they both play (two at home, when they play an afternoon/evening set of games). In Detroit, the Pistons (in the Palace of Auburn Hills) and the Red Wings (at Joe Louis Arena) have 34 shared dates — but only six of them involve home games on the same night.
Another factor this season: The NHL season starts later this year than it has in the past. As recently as 2013-14, the first regular-season game was Oct. 1. Last year it was Oct. 7. This year, it's not until Oct. 12 — creating more chances for overlap with the NBA, which typically starts in late October.
Looking at those Detroit numbers and the late NHL start, perhaps the Wild and Wolves just got a little unlucky this season and this will prove to be an outlier. Regardless, it's quite a jump to go from 24 to 33 to 41 shared dates in the span of two years. It's hardly the end of the world, but it's also not something that figures to make teams, TV partners or fans happy.
