NAHL releases 2019-20 Schedule

The North American Hockey League recently released its 2019-20 regular season schedule. After several years of paying attention, the schedules look similar each time around.

Call the annual Showcase event at the Schwan Super Rink in Blaine, MN the official opening as every team moves into the amazing six-rink facility and plays four times in four days. The regular season gets underway a week or two earlier for several teams and after seasons of paying attention, I have come to the realization it’s almost always the same teams getting the campaign off to an early start.

The Showcase event will take place this season Sept. 18-21 and a dozen teams are hitting the ice the previous weekend.

Six of the seven East Division teams – all but the Jamestown Rebels — will get a weekend pair of games under their best before heading to the Midwest while the Janesville Jets and Topeka Pilots are both in action early as they seem to be every season. The Pilots are hosting the Corpus Christi Ice Rays in South Division action and the Jets will play a home and home set against the Chippewa Steel to open the Midwest. The only other teams in action will be from the South as well as the Shreveport Mudbugs host the New Mexico Ice Wolves.

One change comes in the Midwest where it seems the two Alaska-based teams made the trek to the mainland a week or two early in the past.

Kenai River Brown Bears and Fairbanks Ice Dogs will open at the Showcase this season.

Each team will play 60 regular season contests between the mid-September start to the final games played on April 4.

The 26-team league includes two seven-team divisions – the East and South along with the Midwest and Central Divisions with six teams apiece.

Top four teams in each division qualify for the post season with Best-of-Five Division semi-finals and championship series advancing one rep from each region to the Robertson Cup Championship. The league will go full circle, also wrapping up in Blaine as the Final Four will move to the Championship event at the Fogerty Arena.

Aberdeen Wings are the league’s defending champions.

During the 2019-20 regular season, this website’s focus will once again be on the Midwest teams, including the entire Central Division — the Wings, Austin Bruins, Bismarck Bobcats, Minnesota Wilderness, Minot Minotauros and St. Cloud Bizzard along with the Jets, Steel, Springfield Jr. Blues and Minnesota Magicians from the Midwest and the Pilots out of the South Division.