2017-18 NHL season
| 2017–18 NHL season | |
|---|---|
| League | National Hockey League |
| Sport | Ice hockey |
| Duration | October 4, 2017 – June 2018 |
| Number of games | 82 |
| Number of teams | 31 |
| Regular Season | |
| Playoffs | |
| Stanley Cup | |
The 2017–18 NHL season is the 101st season of operation (100th season of play) of the National Hockey League. With the addition of a new expansion team, the Vegas Golden Knights, 31 teams compete in an 82-game regular season. The regular season began on October 4, 2017, and will end on April 7, 2018. The 2018 Stanley Cup playoffs will then begin a few days afterwards, with the Stanley Cup Finals held in early June.
On June 22, 2016, the NHL confirmed that it had granted an expansion franchise in the city of Las Vegas to an ownership group led by Bill Foley, whose identity was revealed as the Vegas Golden Knights on November 22. The team will play in the Pacific Division of the Western Conference.
On April 3, 2017, the NHL announced that, after five Olympic tournaments in which the NHL allowed its players to participate in the event, it would not do so for the men's hockey tournament at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Furthermore, the league did not include a break for the Olympics in its schedule, and scheduled its All-Star Game as usual for late-January shortly prior to the Olympics (historically, the All-Star Game was not played during Olympic years). Each team's mandatory bye week, stipulated in the league's CBA, was also scattered throughout the month of January.
The restriction will apply to any player under NHL contract, including those in its affiliated minor leagues. Several players have vowed to participate anyway, most notably Alexander Ovechkin and Evgeni Malkin. As the league had little legal room to enforce a ban itself without running afoul of the National Hockey League Players Association, the league instead colluded with the International Ice Hockey Federation, who agreed to establish a blacklist forbidding the national teams from offering invitations to players under NHL contracts.
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