The NHL introduced bye weeks for the first time four seasons ago and it was a bit of a disaster. The byes were spread out over a nine-week period – the Pittsburgh Penguins and the New York Islanders were first out of the gate on Jan. 1 and the byes didn’t wrap until the Anaheim Ducks had theirs at the end of February spilling into March.



Constantly, throughout that nine-week period, teams coming off their byes would play teams that were humming along at regular season pace. The end result was predictable: A whole lot of one-sided games – and a whole lot of unhappy coaches, managers and players. Teams coming off a bye won only 10 of the 30 games. It was so unanimously panned across the board that the NHL even considered pulling the plug on the experiment if it didn’t fare any better the next time out.



Thankfully, it did.



The byes were compressed in Year 2 – all of them unfolding in a 12-day span between Jan. 7 and 19. The overall...