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Originally Posted by Strange Brew
How do we even know this is 3 months in full quarantine? Too many assumptions being made in here IMO of what this would involve. Not too mention the full time period would only apply to the 2 teams playing for the Stanley Cup.
Would Mark Giordano agree to 3 or 4 months of living in a hotel in exchange for the Stanley Cup? Someone should ask him.
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It's just the math of the situation. As I understand it (and this is constantly changing, so the plan may have already changed from this)...
- The first phase will see all the players return to their NHL home city. Once home, the players will need to enter a full 2 week personal isolation. I believe there has been some talk of allowing this to be done with their families, but I also wouldn't be surprised if many players who make their offseason homes somewhere else will just do this on their own to allow their wives and kids to lead a somewhat normal life.
- The next phase will be a 2 week training camp with the teams. I've heard this may be done in the home city, or possibly in the central city where the games will be played. That will likely be determined by what the local authorities are allowing. For example, I'd expect the California-based teams to not be allowed to practice locally, especially San Jose. During this phase, the players will have contact with their teammates, but might have to move into team isolation away from their families to limit outside exposure.
- The next phase would be the resumption of the regular season, if they decide to do that. If they play out the full regular season, it will take a minimum of 3 weeks. They could reduce that to 2 weeks by reducing the total number of games played, but if they shorten it too much, they might as well not even bother.
- At that point, it's already 7 weeks in and the playoffs will start. The teams that don't make the playoffs will be done and they spent 7 weeks in isolation to essentially get nowhere.
- I suppose they could play an accelerated playoff schedule to get things done quicker, but I assume they'll play one game per night on alternating nights, which means it would take approximately 8 weeks to play out a full 4 rounds. They could also add in a few travel days between the second and third rounds to get the final four teams to the same city.
For the two teams in the Final, that's a 15 week commitment. If you win it all, I'm sure it will be worth it, but it's also a 13 week commitment to lose in the Conference Final; 11 weeks to lose in the second round; 9 weeks to lose in the first round; and 7 weeks to not even make the playoffs. It's hard to imagine the players on those 30 teams looking back and thinking it was worth it.