Having the Stanley Cup playoffs in August, even in these unprecedented circumstances, seems ridiculous. Why not Wimbledon in January and the Grey Cup in May?
There should be some relationship, shouldn’t there, between the calendar and where various sports fit? Or with all sports spreading their seasons further and further, in pursuit of additional revenue, do we need to get used to the idea that any of them can be played at any time?
The NHL seems particularly hell-bent on discarding any sense that a hockey season should be contained to a particular time of year. Accordingly, it appears there’s a plan being advanced by the return-to-play committee to stretch the 2019-20 season into August, maybe even September, and start the next one in December.
Suddenly, anything’s possible for Gary (Mr. Flexible) Bettman. Funny, but that didn’t seem to be the way things operated back on Feb. 16, 2005 when Bettman unilaterally cancelled the 2004-05 season because it was “no longer practical to conduct even an abbreviated season.” Couldn’t dream of playing into July then. Couldn’t wait another day to cancel the season.
Clearly, the NHL is flexible with the parameters of its season when it wants to be, and not at all other times.
That playing well beyond Canada Day is something Bettman and his owners are seriously considering just shows how desperate they are getting to find a way to “complete” the 2019-20 campaign, particularly in a way that satisfies their broadcast partners. The NHL loves to talk about tradition when it fits their commercial purposes, but the status of what was once beloved as a winter game was altered long ago by growth into southern climes and now stands to be further twisted by holding the most important games in deep summer.
Be assured that whatever the league is planning, it is most definitely not primarily in the interest of hockey fans. It is for business purposes, pure and simple. The NHL will do almost anything to avoid letting its Canadian and U.S. television contracts roll over for another year. That’s what is driving this, not some sense of responsibility that fans are owed a completion to the season that came to an abrupt halt on March 12 because of the pandemic.
Whatever the case, we’re pretty much at the point where it’s now or never for the NHL, whatever cockamamie script it’s dreaming up.
The board of governors will meet Monday, presumably to hear the results of what the return to play folks have been working on all weekend. Speculation revolves around a 24-team scheme that would include a series of play-in games to determine the usual 16-team field for the playoffs.
The seven worst teams — Buffalo, New Jersey, Anaheim, Los Angeles, San Jose, Ottawa and Detroit — wouldn’t be invited back at all. Imagine that kick in the behind. Not only have you struggled through a lousy season, but you’re not even good enough to participate as a punching bag when the NHL is open to almost any scenario to play in July and August.
So let’s say the league and the players agree to a plan by the end of this week, perhaps to play in four “hubs” where teams would be sequestered until their services are no longer required. Then you need to get the players back, probably to be quarantined for two weeks before any kind of training camp could begin. That takes us to the second week of June.
Then, given that most players won’t have played or even skated for three months, you need a reasonable training period. Two to three weeks sounds fair. So that takes the NHL to the end of June or early July before games can even start.
A Stanley Cup final is then probably in August, although other television commitments and logistical issues could easily push everything to early September.
Whether or not you think this is all a good idea, if this is really what the NHL wants, it needs to get started this week. There’s just no more time left to dream up other solutions.
The biggest obstacle may yet be the players. Not all believe this is such a swell idea. Moreover, if you look at the conditions under which baseball is inviting players back to work, you can see how the NHL’s return might be fraught with similar awkward and unwelcome rules and regulations.
For baseball, there will apparently be no spitting, finger-licking, bat boys/girls, swapping of lineup cards, high-fives, fist bumps, restaurants on the road and post-game showers, among other things. If you watched some of the sanitized Bundesliga goal celebrations on the weekend, you got a sense of how America’s pastime could lose some of its flavour, particularly while being played in empty stadiums.
For hockey, the inability to spit on the ice might be a deal breaker. Maybe no hugs after goals, never mind the juvenile conga line where everybody taps gloves. Scrums and fights seem likely to go. Full face masks could be mandatory, not to mention medical masks on the bench for coaches and trainers.
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There are an incredible number of details to be worked out here, significant and minute. Any reasonable person would look at the NHL’s predicament and totally understand if the season can’t be finished. But the NHL doesn’t want to say uncle.
Fair enough. But it’s deadline time for Bettman and Co. to tell the world precisely what it does want now, and how it’s going to pull it off.
