With the news yesterday that the NBPA approved a December 22nd start for the 2020-21 NBA season, questions immediately followed as to whether the NHL would be following suit in getting their next campaign underway around then as well. While there has been some recent skepticism that the league would be able to meet their target start date of January 1st, Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly told Pierre LeBrun of TSN and The Athletic (Twitter link) that their objective remains to start at that time.
However, LeBrun notes that the joint Return to Play committee (involving the league and the NHLPA) has yet to formally meet. Considering the logistics in getting a schedule together and some of the concerns surrounding the pandemic (not to mention settling on the length of the season), it’s seemingly getting to be crunch time in terms of getting something down that would provide enough notice to start next season when the calendar flips to the new year.
With that in mind, TVA Sports’ Renaud Lavoie adds (via Twitter) that the league is hoping to make an announcement as soon as possible with a lot of work to be done in the next seven to ten days. Speculatively, that would seemingly be a soft deadline to get a schedule in place knowing that players will need ample time to return to their club cities and go through quarantining protocols while the seven teams that didn’t return this summer are expected to receive extra training camp time. With all of that in mind, a five-to-six-week lead time for that plus training camps and exhibition games seems reasonable so the clock is ticking on getting things settled and get that process underway by then.
Of course, there are other factors to consider such as cross-border travel between Canada and the United States. If there are doubts about teams having that ability, the potential exists for temporary divisional re-alignment to create an all-Canadian division which would then shake up the rest of the divisions as well. While things can certainly change in a hurry, there certainly doesn’t appear to be a lot of momentum towards seeing that border open up and while exceptions can be made, there’s no guarantee that the Canadian government will be willing to do so here. Some decisions on that front would have to be made very soon for January 1st to remain a realistic option.
Time hasn’t run out just yet on the NHL starting up when 2021 begins but with all of the various challenges and extra things to navigate in terms of setting up the schedule for next season, there will need to be some significant progress before much longer. Discussions may be cooling off in free agency for now but talks about this will certainly be picking up soon.
The solution here is obvious. Have the seven Canadian based clubs move their base of operations to a U S city. Does Seattle already have an arena? There could be one place. Another team could go to Atlanta, while others could share facilities with U S based clubs. If Canadian fans don’t like it, they can blame their government. You could have Vancouver in Seattle, Toronto in Buffalo and so on. Makes perfect sense to me.
This doesn’t to me.
Why not move all US teams to Canada. If fans do not like it, blame their government!
Canada isn’t the country with Covid cases raging out of control, it’s the US. Why punish Canadians for taking the pandemic seriously when Americans continue to whine about being inconvenienced? The obvious answer is to have the All-Canadian division.
Because, ‘Merica! It’s called nationalism!
If the NHL Office was smart,which they are not,they would PPV the entire league,at $99 a pop. Then bubble the divisions in 1 or 2 locations. Play R,F,S,U. AHL bubble M,T,W and they play at the same rink as the parent club. You stay within your division.
Top 5 make the playoffs,with 4v5 in a one game playoff.
Play each team in your division 6/7 times.
Hoping it’s true but won’t hold my breath