NHL Changing Potential Plan to Return to Play?
Just when you think you’re out of the woods and that the world of pro sports has turned a corner in a positive direction, you get pulled back in, kicking and screaming, hoping that the latest bulletin isn’t one that is going to stick a fork in things. Earlier this week, the NHL announced that they looked to reopen team facilities later this month and take the next step toward returning to game action. On Friday, according to a new report, things might be changing once again and one has to be concerned that it could be a shifting of thought processes.
According to an article in the New York Post, the league is now looking to pivot away from the potential of housing groups of teams at one hub. As opposed to having somewhere between six and eight teams playing in one central location, the NHL is reportedly now looking at having teams playing games in their home arenas. That’s a massive change and one that could create a slew of headaches for the league as it tries to work with its infrastructure and dealing with the differing rules and restrictions that are in place across the United States and Canada at this point in time.
The reasoning for this sudden pivot is unconfirmed but seems to be centered around the same concept that has led to some pushback in major league baseball about a pod or hub system. That is the fact that the players don’t want to be quarantined away from their families for three or four months. The issues were brought up after a meeting between the league officials and the NHL/NHLPA Return to Play committee, which has current NHL players John Tavares (Toronto), James van Riemsdyk (Philadelphia), Connor McDavid (Edmonton), Mark Scheifele (Winnipeg) and Ron Hainsey (Ottawa) on the board along with a variety of league officials.
Trying to shift to a system where you have 31 teams playing in 17 states and five Canadian provinces, in addition to Washington D.C., instead of in four to six potential cities, is going to create a slew of additional red tape and potential pratfalls. Almost every individual state or province has their own laws, regulations and systems in place on how to deal with COVID-19 and that makes for a lot of different rivers to cross. Factor in the extended travel that would be entailed by that and the amount of testing that would be needed, not only for the players and coaches, but for the support personnel necessary to have the games take place and it likely becomes cost prohibitive as well. Those costs and requirements would be limited and held in check by playing in the hub concept.
We’ve seen that the league has pitched potentially a 24-team playoff concept but that, again, is centered around a hub concept where the top six teams in each division would battle. In that scenario, the top two teams in the division would play a best of three series to determine who would be the division champion while the third-place team would face the sixth-place squad and the fourth-place team battles the fifth-place squad in best of three series. The winners of those series would join the top four teams in a more familiar 16-team postseason field en route to crowning a Stanley Cup champion.
That concept, much like the concept of teams playing in their own venues right now, is fraught with issues. While it’s good to see that the league is coming up with options to get back to the ice and crown a champion, the fact remains that you have to find a way to strike a compromise. As it stands, the playing in your own arenas concept, while favored by the players, likely isn’t the best course of action to get back to playing. Here’s hoping that things turn again and we do see a return of players, at least in some fashion, to team facilities this month as expected en route to getting the season back underway.