UPDATE: NHLPA votes for further negotiations on 24-team return to play format

[Otto-matic]

Originally Posted by Reggie Dunlop

I don't think this happens.

How many individuals (players and support staff) want to be part of this? Players sign on knowing the inherent danger of the game, but they didn't up for this. It's a disaster (and a tragic one) waiting to happen.

How many players get the flu every year? It's not uncommon to see. Can we expect headstrong young jocks to follow protocols?

Also for the players who have a family. How many of them are wiling to be locked away for 2 months.

[Derek Sutton]

Originally Posted by Southside

NHL action in Edmonton beyond April? Strange times indeed. But, seriously, why Edmonton? Genuinely curious.

Originally Posted by Rejean31

The answer is simple, M-C-D-A-V-I-D.

Low number of Covid cases, lowest number in Canada with a million+ population. New rink with connected practice facility, proximity to hotels.

[standinmotion]

Originally Posted by Otto-matic

Also for the players who have a family. How many of them are wiling to be locked away for 2 months.

1. They will have been spending time with family for months already. Chances are the wives will be eager to drive the husbands to the airport at that point.

2. Millions of dollars are at stake here for each player.

[troutman]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

What would be suitable criteria to be able to award the Stanley Cup?

The NHL has had shortened seasons before. They awarded the Cup during WW2, playing 50 game seasons with 6 teams, with many top players unable to participate because of the war.

The NHL has talked about needing whatever they do to be "legitimate".
So what do we need to see?

Just my opinion - if we are going to award The Cup - in general, I think there should be at least a 50 game regular season, followed by 4 rounds of playoffs (best of 7), without interruption. Anything less diminishes the marathon that the quest for the Cup should be. I want to know that the Champ is probably the best team that year. With other formats, you could end up with a fluke Champ.

Imagine the Flames win this thing, and many really don't consider it legitimate. Might be entertaining, might feel ok, but not fully satisfying.

[Weitz]

Originally Posted by troutman

Just my opinion - if we are going to award The Cup - in general, I think there should be at least a 50 game regular season, followed by 4 rounds of playoffs (best of 7), without interruption. Anything less diminishes the marathon that the quest for the Cup should be. I want to know that the Champ is probably the best team that year. With other formats, you could end up with a fluke Champ.

Imagine the Flames win this thing, and many really don't consider it legitimate. Might be entertaining, might feel ok, but not fully satisfying.

How often does the best team actually win the cup though? Everyone always says anything can happen in the playoffs.

As for your second point - only rivals will think the cup win isn't legitimate IMO.

[Jiri Hrdina]

Originally Posted by Weitz

How often does the best team actually win the cup though? Everyone always says anything can happen in the playoffs.

As for your second point - only rivals will think the cup win isn't legitimate IMO.

For decades the cup has been awarded to a team that wins 16 post-season games.
Anything less than that will make that cup winner less impressive.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina

For decades the cup has been awarded to a team that wins 16 post-season games.
Anything less than that will make that cup winner less impressive.

Like I said before whatever team wins including the Flames I would always put an asterisk next to it as it would represent an non-standard season and Stanley Cup playoffs. Winning team wouldn't even be able to have a cup parade for crying out loud.

[Vinny01]

Eklund with the suggestion to have the draft in June and allow for trades that would take effect immediately and once the season restarts players would be on their new teams.

I just don’t like the idea of having the draft and a huge event that is critical to team building being held and then go into the playoffs.

[Erick Estrada]

Originally Posted by Vinny01

Eklund with the suggestion to have the draft in June and allow for trades that would take effect immediately and once the season restarts players would be on their new teams.

I just don’t like the idea of having the draft and a huge event that is critical to team building being held and then go into the playoffs.

The entire thing is a little pie in the sky anyway. I get that they have to investigate any and all concepts that may allow them to finish the season but there are so many hurdles and so many things that could cause it to go sideways that I just can't see it happening. I still think fall should be the earliest for professional sports to resume.

[Toonage]

Considering how well so many players do on new teams after the trade deadline (most don't do well at all) I'd be fine with this so long as the Flames didn't make a move.

[Strange Brew]

Originally Posted by troutman

Just my opinion - if we are going to award The Cup - in general, I think there should be at least a 50 game regular season, followed by 4 rounds of playoffs (best of 7), without interruption. Anything less diminishes the marathon that the quest for the Cup should be. I want to know that the Champ is probably the best team that year. With other formats, you could end up with a fluke Champ.

Imagine the Flames win this thing, and many really don't consider it legitimate. Might be entertaining, might feel ok, but not fully satisfying.

I beleieve that up to the late 80's the first round was best of 5. And of course it hasn't always been four rounds and no one thinks all those Candiens banners are illegitimate.

IMO a playoff with the first round or two a best of 5 wouldn't change my view of the legitimacy of the winner. And for me, the regular season is already too long so while I don't think you should jump straight to playoffs, I don't need to see much more either.

I'm already not fully satisfied with life as it is being carried out now so I'd pay to see some playoff hockey this spring and summer even if it's not what I had expected at the start of the year.

[Robbob]

The benefit with everyone playing out of a few arenas is you don't have to worry about buliding availability. With no travel there is no reason you can't play some back to back games to compress the playoffsand regular season.

[standinmotion]

Originally Posted by Jiri Hrdina

For decades the cup has been awarded to a team that wins 16 post-season games.
Anything less than that will make that cup winner less impressive.

So anything before 86-87 season is less impressive? The league changed over time, and adapted to different settings. This is an exceptional circumstance, and the league responds to the circumstance however best they can. If a vaccine can not be found, do we shut down hockey forever or do we adapt and find a different way forward?

[getbak]

Last week, when there was talk of running the playoffs from a single city, I started thinking about the logistics of doing that, and the more things you consider, it starts to become unwieldy quickly. It's not just 20 players per team, but it's all the support staff, it's additional players who will need to be ready as injury replacements, and it's arena and hotel staff as well.

It's one thing to ask players who have millions of dollars at stake to sacrifice and go into isolation for potentially 3 months, it's a lot tougher (and probably impossible) to ask someone who is making minimum wage in the housekeeping or catering departments of a hotel to do the same. Even the "Black Aces" players you'd have to have waiting in the wings would be doing it for their per diem (would they even receive the per diem if they're having every meal provided for them?).

Even if they are able to completely isolate the teams from direct contact with the outside world, there will still be indirect contact any time they eat a meal or take the bus from the hotel to the arena or practice facility.

----------

I started thinking about the likely process to get this started...

1. The league books the arenas and hotels for all of the teams in the chosen cities. All of the hotels are cleaned from top to bottom before any player arrives and strict processes are put in place for any contact between hotel staff and team personnel. The same would need to happen at the arena and any practice or training facilities that would be used by the teams.
   
   
2. Players and staff begin to arrive from wherever they've been since March (some travelling from overseas).
   
   
3. Players arrive at the hotel and go through a medical check and take an initial COVID test. Because there's no way of knowing who the players may have come into contact with while travelling, they would all need to go into strict personal isolation for 2 weeks. During the 2 week isolation period, the players can't leave their rooms and their only human contact is with the hotel staff member who brings them 3 meals a day and a medical person who performs a daily health check (all of whom are wearing full-body PPE). The only exercise they can do during this time is whatever they can do within the confines of their hotel rooms.
   
   
4. Once the 2 week personal isolation period is over, players and staff would be given the all-clear and can now enter team isolation. They can intermingle with their teammates and coaches, but they still have no contact with anyone outside that bubble and they can only leave the hotel property when travelling to and from the practice rink and/or main arena.
   
   
5. Once the players are allowed to leave personal isolation, the teams can begin their 2-week practice/training camp sessions before the resumption of the season. The team isolation would continue until the team's season is over.

At this point, the players have been in isolation for 4 weeks and still haven't played a game.

----------

Now, they're talking about playing the rest of the regular season. I don't see any way that can be a viable option. Every team has a minimum of 11 games left, Carolina and the Islanders (both in the thick of the playoff race) have 14. There's no realistic way they could play out the regular season in less than 3 weeks. Even 14 games in 21 days is a lot. That means we'd be at least 7 weeks into this process and the playoffs haven't even started.

A reduced regular season would be more-realistic, but the more they reduce it, the more-pointless it becomes. Let's say they decide to resume and play enough games for every team to finish with 74 games played... That would mean 9 teams would already be eliminated from the playoffs before they even began their quarantine.

Setting the season at 74 games (and assuming the wild card is dropped and the top-4 in each division make the playoffs), would see the 4 playoff teams in the Atlantic Division already set. They'd just be playing for ranking. In the Pacific, Arizona would have an outside shot of making the playoffs and bumping the Flames or Canucks out. Otherwise, that would just be a battle for ranking. The Central and Metro Divisions would have interesting fights for the playoff spots.

If you're a player on one of the eliminated teams, why would you agree to subject yourself to the whole quarantine process for no reason? In those situations, I could see a lot of veterans coming down with season-ending injuries just before they had to enter quarantine.


Also, resuming a regular season means that almost twice as many teams need to be accommodated in each city. That's twice as many hotel rooms needed. How will ice time and workout facilities and dressing rooms be handled if there are 8 teams all playing in one city? Those things are a lot easier to deal with if they jumped right into the playoffs and only had 4 teams per city.


Going straight to the playoffs would be extremely difficult, but restarting the regular season seems impossible.

[djsFlames]

Who goes to which building though. There are surely some out of conference games remaining, so it would not be as simple as just sending each division to a location.

2 buildings would make the most sense. One east/west

Significantly reduces travel and you have the entire conference in one place which allows you to carry out 3/4 of the playoffs there.

Also *shudders* at having to listen to that godawful Oilers horn on a nightly basis.

[getbak]

Originally Posted by djsFlames

Who goes to which building though. There are surely some out of conference games remaining, so it would not be as simple as just sending each division to a location.

2 buildings would make the most sense. One east/west

Significantly reduces travel and you have the entire conference in one place which allows you to carry out 3/4 of the playoffs there.

Also *shudders* at having to listen to that godawful Oilers horn on a nightly basis.

Presumably, they would just scrap the remaining regular schedule and just reschedule games within the Division to make sure every team has played an equal number in the end.



I was shuddering at the thought of having Quinn and Remenda calling every game. Although, you'd think play-by-play is something that could be done remotely. They wouldn't need to quarantine with the teams or even travel to the cities where the games are being played.

I wonder if the broadcast cameras can be operated remotely?

[Torture]

Yeah, the logistics are pretty tough to wrap your head around.

If you go straight to the playoffs you're starting cold rather than after the normal 82 game marathon. But continuing the regular season with the number of teams involved just doesn't seem feasible.

What if a player tests positive in the middle of the playoffs? They would have been in contact with their team, with other teams, do you just put everything on hold for 14 days and resume the series?

[transplant99]

Originally Posted by getbak

Presumably, they would just scrap the remaining regular schedule and just reschedule games within the Division to make sure every team has played an equal number in the end.



I was shuddering at the thought of having Quinn and Remenda calling every game. Although, you'd think play-by-play is something that could be done remotely. They wouldn't need to quarantine with the teams or even travel to the cities where the games are being played.

I wonder if the broadcast cameras can be operated remotely?

No...but nor do they need to be.

Game cameras are a long way from the benches and if there are no fans, operators would be completely isolated from anyone.

The producer and director are usually in the truck with other operators though and it would be difficult to have enough distance in there.

As for PBP, they too would be a looong way from the ice as normal so shouldnt be an issue, but it can be done remotely. Harnarayan Singh still does his call from a studio i believe.

[Reggie Dunlop]

What happens when a player, fearing for their health (a legitimate concern), refuses to participate? Can you blame them? Do you void their contract? What if it's a star?

All it takes is one star player refusing to participate to open the floodgates as many others follow suite.

[Textcritic]

Originally Posted by Strange Brew

I beleieve that up to the late 80's the first round was best of 5. And of course it hasn't always been four rounds and no one thinks all those Candiens banners are illegitimate.

IMO a playoff with the first round or two a best of 5 wouldn't change my view of the legitimacy of the winner...

Right, but we are talking about historical precedents that are now at least 40-years in the past. The League has changed so much over the course of that time that I don't think these appeals to the game of long-past eras hold much legitimacy. But moreover, I also think with how entrenched the League has been about the current playoff format that this exemplifies just how critically important it is to them, the players and the fans. Even amid some pretty dramatic changes in the 1980s, 90s and oughts, the one constant has been four rounds in a seven-game format, six players aside, and by resolution of scoring more goals than the other team in each game. It has been like this for so long now, that I would argue this is as sacred a tradition as there is in the League today.

Sixteen wins. That is what every Stanley Cup champion of the present era has had to achieve. Anything less than that is anathema in my books.