It’s time for another edition of the PHR Mailbag. Topics include hub cities for when play resumes, roster sizes, the upcoming UFA market, Stanley Cup Final marketability, and Vegas. If your question doesn’t appear here, watch for it in our next edition.
GBear: Two questions in one here. Do you think the degree in which individual states have reopened their economies and allowed for social gatherings might be the determining factor as to where the games are played, and linked to that, could a limited number of fans in attendance be a possibility?
BOSSports21: What do you think the 2 hub cities will be? In an ideal world, I think they’d like to have them in Vegas and Toronto. But with Canadian COVID regulations, it might need to be shifted to a US Eastern city. In that case, thinking either Columbus or Tampa.
My first thought when I saw this was yes, the potential for fans could certainly impact where the NHL chooses to go. Even at partial capacity, that’s still more money than no capacity. And with escrow and the salary cap being huge considerations at this point, it’s hard to turn away the possibility of some extra money than expected.
But there’s also the safety element at play. Allowing fans (and subsequently, more arena staff) brings more people into the proverbial bubble. More people creates a higher risk of transmission if a fan transfers the virus to others. Perhaps it’s a limited risk to the players and NHL staff but it wouldn’t look good on anyone if there was a rash of positive COVID-19 cases that come from people attending hockey games.
There’s also the fact that multiple games are going to be played each day at the start. The enhanced sanitization protocols would need to be done in between each game which may not be possible. Perhaps it’s done in a way where a certain section is open for each game with the rest of the facility cordoned off. Game two is in a different level using only certain entrances, and so on with full sanitization being done at the end of the final game to get ready for the next day. But capacity would still have to be limited. Will it be a factor? I think so. But will it be the determining factor? Probably not.
It looks like Vegas will be one of the hub cities with an announcement to be made official over the next week and a half. The league is believed to want a Canadian team as the second option and it’s reasonable to think they’ll want one in the Eastern Time zone. That would mean Toronto is their other likely target at this time. If Canada’s current quarantining rules aren’t changed though, I could see them looking to Columbus ahead of Tampa Bay with there being a recent spike of COVID-19 cases in Florida.
Eric Lord: The proposed NHL roster size of 28 players seems low to me. There could be a rash of injuries due to the long layoff. If a team carries 16 forwards on their 28-man roster and gets 5 forward injuries, they will be shorthanded. Will teams be allowed to keep a black aces squad practicing in another location in case they get overrun by injuries?
pitmanrich: Do you think an increased roster size could be made permanent and not just for this playoff tournament? The salary cap might not go up by much but rosters could be filled up with young players or veterans on cheap contracts allowing players to heal properly from injury.
To clarify, the speculated roster limit at the moment is 28 skaters, not 28 players total and the expectation is that the number of goalies teams can carry is unlimited. As a result, teams won’t be carrying 16 forwards. It’ll be closer to 18 forwards and 10 defensemen which should allow for some injury protection.
I’d like to see a taxi squad be available and the last mailbag I did back in May, I thought there would be one. Nothing has come out on that front yet which surprises me. Having a few more players doing some sort of conditioning camp to stay in shape would be beneficial and I’d like to see a scenario where if a player is ruled out for the rest of the playoffs, they can recall someone from that Black Ace squad if they want. It doesn’t look like it’s happening yet at least but here’s hoping there is one.
It’s hard to envision roster sizes increasing permanently. Knowing that the salary cap is going to likely be flattened out for a little while until revenues rebound and escrow drops, adding more players to the active roster is only going to create a tighter squeeze for teams to work around. The current minimum salary is $700K and jumps to $750K for 2021-22. More than half the league finished this season with less than $1MM in cap room. Adding one player would be a huge challenge let alone more. With CBA talks ongoing, part of me wonders if the NHL will push for roster sizes to be dropped by one to ease cap issues, knowing the overall drop in players would largely be offset by Seattle’s entry in 2021-22. I doubt the NHLPA would consider it but it wouldn’t surprise me if the concept was brought up at least.
MoneyBallJustWorks: What do you see this year’s crop of FAs doing (especially the mid to high tier guys) with a presumed cap freeze or decline? Do you think we see more 1-2 year deals as a result? Also, as a result of the playoffs not finishing till likely September/October, when do you think we see the start of Free Agency?
It all depends on those CBA talks I just mentioned. If an agreement is hammered out that sets a fixed cap (or even gradual increases) for several years, there will be enough certainty for teams and players to hammer out some longer-term deals like usual. If that doesn’t happen though, I expect a large segment of players are going to sign one-year deals with the hopes that things will rebound on the financial side a year from now. Of that group, I suspect quite a few more will just stay with their current teams and opt for short-term stability as well which is something we don’t see a lot of.
That won’t be the case for everyone though. The top players are still going to get the long-term, big money deals if they want although the top-end salary may come down a little bit as a result. Some of the mid-tier players may decide to take a three or four-year deal at a lower rate for long-term stability so it’s not as if the market is going to completely dry up. It will almost certainly look a lot different though.
As for when free agency might happen, let’s look at the NBA’s latest set of timelines for a clue as their camp and desired start dates are quite close to the NHL’s. They’re targeting an early-to-mid-October finish for the NBA Finals so let’s use that as a rough timeline for the Stanley Cup Final as well. The draft would probably be a week or so after that and then there has to be a few days for the UFA and RFA interview window as well. That’d take things close to the last week of October. With all that in mind, I could see Monday, October 26 making sense as a free agent start date but if series end quicker than anticipated, that could be moved up as I think they’d ideally like to be into that part of the offseason closer to the middle of the month.
coachdit: What two teams do you believe will make for the most competitive and entertaining finals this year, as that’s exactly what the NHL needs now more than ever?
This is tough to answer as the definition of entertaining is going to vary. Some may want high-scoring games that are played at a run-and-gun pace. Others like the tight 2-1 games with lots of chances but high-end goaltending. Some enjoy the higher level of physicality that the postseason brings and would find a series with more of that entertaining.
I can’t even pin it down as to what the NHL might want. Would they rather see the top skill teams or would they rather two big-market teams get in to boost TV ratings and advertising revenues?
Personally, I think Colorado could be a compelling team to come out of the West. They have plenty of high-end skill and relatively unproven goaltending that can be hit or miss which adds to the intrigue. Washington’s in a similar situation, especially with the untested Ilya Samsonov and the struggling Braden Holtby between the pipes while they have lots of firepower up front. I think a series with them has the potential to provide a bit of everything and some unpredictability along the way while going close to the distance. That would be an entertaining Stanley Cup Final in my book.
jrlp: Isn’t it time Vegas got its LAS back?
It seemed strange that the time that the team name wasn’t ‘Las Vegas’ and to this day, it still is a little odd. But the reality is that a lot of people use the shortened form of ‘Vegas’ when referring to the city. That’s largely unique as places like Los Angeles and New York aren’t like that and New Jersey isn’t abbreviated anywhere near as frequently as Las Vegas is. That made the decision to call them ‘Vegas’ more understandable, especially with a two-word team name as well.
Given the success that the team has had on the ice and off of it in terms of merchandise and marketing, I don’t think there’s much of an appetite to change anything. As a result, expect that the team will remain the Vegas Golden Knights for the foreseeable future.
Never put the LAS back. In the immortal words of Justin Timberlake in Social Network
“Drop the the it’s cleaner”
If the cause for CV-19 “spikes” is due to more testing being done, as in the case of Florida, I wouldn’t rule out Tampa as being a hub city. Or Miami for that matter, as their fans already practice social distancing, lol! (Okay, that was mean). :D
There should be some way to allow some fans into the building (tempature check before entering, etc). Not even so much for added revenue, but to add atmosphere to the games. I think the players would even want that. Playing in an empty rink will feel more like a scrimmage than a game.
Unless they are producing false positives, more testing doesn’t create more cases, just reveals them.
I clicked by a KBO game the other day. They figured out the lack of fans problem. They filled the stands with giant stuffed animals.
They are just going to have to mike the players, coaches, refs and live with the profanity because silence would be a weird reaction to an OT goal.
The solution to the NHL’s coming cap problems is to just keep the cap artificially flat or with a very small increase each year and just let the escrow hammer fall.
Letting the cap drop makes a lot of players retroactively overpaid relative to their % of the cap and it’s unfair to coming FA’s.
Let the contracts be written as if they will pay out based on the $84-85 million range and allow escrow the claw back the difference with the actual revenues.
Thank you for fielding my question Brian. I didn’t deserve that one buddy, I blabbed too much in my post. Exceptional points.