So here we are in mid-October and nobody’s playing hockey.
Actually, that’s not entirely true. Joe Thornton is voting with his feet and is off to skate with Davos in the Swiss league. It’s really here in North America where the days of fall seem pretty empty without the beginning of a new hockey season. No NHL. Major junior hockey is shut down. U Sports hockey isn’t happening.
The Greater Toronto Hockey League, the largest minor hockey operation on the planet, is dormant. Some girls’ hockey teams are practising, but plans to play in four-on-four bubbles have been put on hold. My Friday morning game with the Lorne Park crew has been cancelled for the year.
Everything seems a little backward. The leaves are falling, hockey is on the shelf, there’s no Grey Cup on the horizon, but yet The Masters is coming up in four weeks.
When it comes to the world of hockey, the optimism of seeing the bubbled Stanley Cup playoffs succeed is now subsiding, and the understanding is setting in that the entire industry is staggering under the unrelenting pressure of COVID-19. The honest-to-Bill-Gadsby belief that the good ol’ NHL could conquer all because hockey is wonderful has now run headlong into reality. It’s like a giant cosmic payback for taking the game from the great outdoors where it was born and moving it almost entirely indoors. You know. Where the virus is most comfortable.
Interestingly, some of the strongest indicators about the fearful way in which the NHL is imagining its future emanated from Las Vegas over the past week. The Golden Knights signed the top free agent on the market, defenceman Alex Pietrangelo, to a seven-year contract worth $8.8 million (U.S.) per season. In normal times, this would have been a healthy sign for the league. Teams pursuing talent. Stars getting paid. An indication business was good.
But because of the flat salary cap created by the coronavirus, the Knights had to dump two good veterans. Pietrangelo was one of a very limited group of players who did particularly well in free agency. He was probably the only player to truly hit a home run.
Compare that with the previous free agency “frenzy” in July, 2019. Players like Artemi Panarin, Sergei Bobrovsky and Matt Duchene hit the jackpot, all with seven-year contracts. Mats Zuccarello and Tyler Myers, neither an all-star, both got $30 million over five years.
By comparison, this year has been mostly a free-agent fizzle. Jakob Markstrom and Kevin Shattenkirk did fairly well, as did Torey Krug. Players like T.J. Brodie and Tyler Toffoli got new deals, but for pretty much the same money. Significant names like Braden Holtby, Henrik Lundqvist, Corey Crawford and Justin Schultz took sizable pay cuts.
Tyson Barrie, a $5.5-million player two years ago, is now on a one-year contract at $3.75 million. Bobby Ryan has gone from being a $7-million player in Ottawa to a $1-million player in Detroit. Kyle Turris was making $6 million per in Nashville; now he’s making $1.65 million in Edmonton. Many well-known players don’t have new contracts at all.
This is not normal for the NHL. This isn’t the market. This is something else.
The other news out of Vegas, meanwhile, was an honest assessment by owner Bill Foley on the immediate future of the league. This was particularly useful since we rarely hear from actual owners these days other than Eugene Melnyk.
While NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has been talking confidently of starting up again Jan. 1, Foley says he can’t see it happening before February. Even then, Foley says, it would have to be a reduced schedule that must be finished by the end of June, playoffs and all, because rightsholder NBC has the Summer Olympics in July. Foley said NHL owners are “very nervous” about the future.
“We all thought we’d be out of COVID by now,” he said in a radio interview.
Foley indicated the Golden Knights need to be at 40 per cent attendance just to break even. Right now, Foley says, in his market he would be restricted to 10 per cent.
“We can’t make it on that,” he said. “That’s not enough.”
Nobody has been more bullish on the league in recent seasons than Foley, who bought in at $500 million. If he’s nervous, you can bet a lot of other teams are terrified.
In Dallas, employees are being furloughed again after the Stars made the Stanley Cup final. The Chicago Blackhawks have made some tough salary decisions, including Crawford, that have upset core players. NBC’s Cup final numbers were down 61 per cent.
All the signs point to a league that is retreating and preparing for the worst. Players got their most recent paycheques in April, and are scheduled to get another regular paycheque on Oct. 31. That’s it until the next season begins. If and when it begins.
Bettman’s bravado aside, the NHL is facing its toughest financial challenge since the days of the World Hockey Association. That challenge was met largely because the WHA owners ran out of cash. The coronavirus, however, doesn’t have a payroll to meet. It resolutely marches on, like Sherman to the sea.
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We can try to create chatter about whether Zach Bogosian will be better than Cody Ceci, how much signing Evgeny Dadonov will help Ottawa reach the salary floor, the merits of an all-Canadian division and whether Brendan Gallagher is worth the money.
But it’s really all speculation that’s more idle than ever. The bubble season was a useful and effective delaying tactic. Now, the facts on the ground can’t be avoided with a trick play.
For the foreseeable future, the coronavirus is kneeling on hockey’s neck.
