I'm fine with keeping threads open between games, but you guys need to realize that if a thread needs to be split, it's easier for me to lock the thread while I'm doing said maintenance. I don't care if you want to talk about hockey or whatever, as long as you're not breaking any of the (very few) rules that I enforce here, you're golden. Just don't go crapting a brick if I have to lock a thread for 5 or 10 minutes here and there so that I can clean it up when they DO get out of hand. It's a pain in the ass to split threads while people are still posting in them.
The only other reason I can think of that threads sometimes aren't open as long as you might like is because I'm not always sitting in front of a computer at 7am or whatever arbitrary time we're talking about, so sometimes I lock them when I get a chance. Though I'd like to point out that that's usually later rather than sooner.