Bettman still weighing options

NHL looking at possibly starting new season in four weeks

All options remain on the table for the National Hockey League.

Or, at least, any options that result in starting an abbreviated 2020-21 regular season.

As players across the league continue to return to their team cities in anticipation of opening faceoffs coming sometime in mid-January, commissioner Gary Bettman acknowledged on Wednesday that much ground needs to be covered before play begins.

Speaking via video conference at the World Hockey Forum in Moscow and quoted by NHL.com, Bettman said the plan remains to “play as many games as possible.”

A start in four weeks gets less and less likely with each passing day.

There won’t be a full schedule of 82 games, of course, with something probably in the range of 56 games, and where the games are played has not been decided. There’s little appetite among players for a return to bubble life, which went off without a hitch in Toronto and Edmonton in August and September from a coronavirus perspective. But players have no interest in spending any more time away from their families than what is necessary.

“We’re focused on whether we’re going to play in our buildings and do some limited traveling or play in a bubble, and that’s something we’re working on and getting medical advice on,” Bettman said. “We don’t think we can conduct an entire regular season that way (in bubbles). But circumstances, depending on where Covid is spiking and where the medical system is being taxed at any given time, may require us to adjust.

“If enough teams can’t play without fans in their own facilities, then we may have to move more toward a hub. It may be that some teams are playing in other buildings. It may be that a whole group of teams have to play in other buildings.

“One of the things that we’re doing for the regular season, as we’re planning it, is we’re going to just play within our divisions, so we’re not going to play every team against everybody else.”

And yes, count on an allCanadian division.

“We may have to, only for the regular season, have the Canadian teams play each other in Canada in one or more cities and then we have to realign the remaining 24 teams in the United States,”

Bettman said, coming close to confirming what has been reported numerous times during the past few weeks.

The biggest challenge for the NHL?

“Making sure that our players and supporting personnel are safe and healthy and making sure that we’re not doing anything that puts the communities in which we’re playing at risk either in terms of spreading Covid or taking medical resources, whether it’s testing or vaccinations,” Bettman said. “We understand what is vitally important to each community and to the health and welfare of each community, and we don’t want to do anything that would interfere with that. Everything that we’re doing and working on with the Players’ Association starts with keeping the players and the communities in which we play safe and healthy.”