For the past few weeks, there’s been a staring contest going on between the National Hockey League’s executive leadership and the player’s union. At issue were the financial ramifications for both sides of running a 2020-21 season most likely before few, if any, paying fans.
According to an update from Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman, the staring contest is over. The players appear to have won the day on the financial front.
According to Friedman, the NHLPA was willing to budge a bit in exchange for a “meaningful concession” from the NHL. They got none, so the two sides decided to just keep going with the CBA terms that they agreed to back in July.
With the financial staring contest over, they’ve reportedly moved onto figuring out how to stage a 2020-21 hockey season. Apparently a lot of progress has been made, per Friedman:
Targets include a Jan. 13 start to the season, with non-playoff teams reporting Dec. 28 and others on Jan. 1. No exhibition games appear likely. I believe there is a short-term “hub plan” being worked on just in case, but it is not the preference. The biggest headache might be training camp plans in places like Montreal, San Jose (Arizona?) and Winnipeg, which have strict current restrictions due to COVID-19.
So what’s the long and the short of what we know about the proposed 2020-21 season?
- The season will be 52 or 56 games in length, followed by a four round (best of seven) post-season.
- Wherever possible, games will be played in teams’ home arenas and the schedules will be designed to reduce travel wherever possible.
- Due to current (and anticipated) travel restrictions regarding the border, the Flames will be playing in the Canadian Division (with Vancouver, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal) and only play in-division games.
- The first two rounds of the playoffs will be in-division.
- Because of NBC’s anticipated coverage of the Summer Olympics, the playoffs will need to be complete by mid-July (which mean they begin likely in mid-May).
- Again, because of the Canadian border complexities, there will likely be taxi squads of non-roster players available to (at least) the Canadian teams. It’s unclear how this would work or how these players would impact the salary cap.
The fuzzy parts of the 2020-21 campaign will likely become much clearer in the coming days as we inch towards everything become formalized.
