There will also be a schedualing wrinkle at some point in the series. I totally agree with the speculation it would begin Saturday. But it can't go every other day, both MSG and the Igloo are booked on Tuesday 5/27, where game 6 lines up.
They can probably either skip a day (EWXEW...) or double up a day (EWEEWE...) depending on which is better for the overall schedule. Or, they could even do "TBD" for both the day and time - game 6 isn't guaranteed to be played, so they may TBD the west, meaning that the west could play on both 5/26 and 5/28 if the east doesn't force a game 6 and force the west into playing on 5/27.
That said, TBDing a weekday game doesn't seem like a good strategy for getting people in the stands.
Edit: Just did some preliminary math, and things could get interesting right from the start. Friday 5/16 is the "buffer/rest" day - NBCSN doesn't have a hockey slot scheduled. Assuming for the sole purposes of ticketing that Boston makes it to the ECF, the ECF (and, thus, our team) will pretty much have to have the lead-in to the Preakness, so our game starts on Sat 5/17 at either 12:30 or 1. They don't want to leave Saturday without hockey.
If the WCF is Minnesota/LA, LA would host first, having the better regular season record. But Staples Center is already taken on Sun 5/18. Given that the powers that be would have a heart attack on a weekend day without hockey, that means that we'd be likely to have back-to-back games this coming weekend - a huge ticket bonanza for you lucky STHers. (Well, except that Game 1 early matinees don't seem to go over too well.)
The only other possibility would be to have LA play Saturday night along with our matinee, but that leaves a big gap in NBC's programming. NBCSN for some reason has conference finals scheduled on Sat/Sun at 8 PM next week, along with NBC's scheduled afternoon games (1 on Sat, and 3 on Sun). I bet NBCSN has replays.
