The 2021-2022 season kicks off one week from tonight as the Wild find themselves back in California.

Welcome to the new season same as the old season.

The NHL will play a full 82 game schedule this year for the first time in a while and the league has returned to pre-COVID divisions.  The Wild will play every team in the NHL this season. They will travel to Canada almost every month and will mostly get back what you would think of as a normal NHL schedule ...

** looks at February **

Oh yeah, I forgot about the Olympics.  Never mind all that.

Let's dive into the Wild's season schedule and find all the weirdness that comes out.

* The Wild play every team in the Central 4 times, except the Blues and the Coyotes. Why have an asymmetric schedule like this? I cannot answer that. Their only home game against the Blues is the Winter Classic. That's also the only time they play the Blues until April.

* The Wild play every team in the Eastern Conference twice, and every team in the Pacific division thrice.

* The worst road trip will probably be in December, 4 games in 6 days with travel to EDM, SJ, LA, and Vegas.

* The Wild don't have a home game for 35 days between 1/24 and 3/1 (five road games in a row, with the Olympic break in the middle)

* After the Olympic break the Wild have 16 games in both March and April.  32 games in 60 days is a pretty tough finish to the season. 11 of those 32 games are against Central division opponents.

* The longest homestand of the season is at the end of March, with 9 games in a row at home.

* The last three games of the season are against Arizona, Calgary, and Colorado - so it seems pretty unlikely that those games will be against teams the Wild are directly competing with for playoff spots or positioning (Arizona will be terrible, Colorado will be far ahead of Minnesota, and Calgary is in a different division).