NHL DETERMINED TO PLAY EVERY GAME
Player safety takes a back seat as league draws its line in the sand over schedule
What would happen if the Vancouver Canucks didn't finish the rest of the season?
What if the game they played 3½ weeks ago, before a wave of COVID -19 washed through their dressing room and infected most of their players and coaches and other staff members, ended up becoming their last game of the year?
Would you be angry? Would you complain that the Canucks were robbed of a playoff spot?
Would you attach an asterisk to the season?
If you do, then it would have to be the second asterisk. Or third, or fourth. Because if you didn't already think the legitimacy of this season was in doubt before J.T. Miller criticized the league for putting players in a “dangerous” position by forcing the team to cram in more games than seems humanly — or humanely — possible, then you haven't been paying attention.
Where to begin? From shrinking the schedule down to 56 games to an all-canadian division to players and teams sitting out for weeks on end because of COVID -19 protocols, nothing about this season has been normal.
And yet, the NHL seemingly has its limits. A line in the sand has been drawn where the schedule is concerned. They don't want another repeat of last year, when the season was cut short and not every team played the same number of games, and the playoffs had to be expanded from 16 to 22 teams to make it fair for everyone involved.
So they keep postponing games and pushing back the end of regular season to accommodate more and more games. The first day of the playoffs was originally set for May 11. Now, it's looking like it will be May 21. That, in turn, should push back the last possible day of the Stanley Cup final from July 9 to July 29.
That is, if we don't get any more postponements from now until then. And with more and more COVID -19 cases popping up each and every day — and with little room on the calendar to push things back further — the chances of getting everyone to finish on time is becoming less and less realistic.
On Friday, the league announced that Colorado's next three games had been postponed after a third player had entered COVID protocols. No date was given for the rescheduled games, but considering that May 19 is looking like it will be the final day of the regular season, the Avalanche could conceivably play their remaining 13 games in 25 days.
The Canucks are in an even worse time crunch.
At first, the league wanted them to play 19 games in 31 days. But after Miller's criticisms, the league decided to postpone Friday's game against Edmonton and moved Saturday night's game against Toronto back a day to Sunday at 4 p.m. PT.
That gave the Canucks another couple of days to rest their Covid-ravaged lungs before going through the gauntlet of an even more condensed schedule that will see the team play 19 games in 33 days.
When it's all over, the standings won't have changed. But the perception that the league has the players' best intentions at heart may have.
The Canucks, who sit in sixth place in the North Division, are 10 points back of the Montreal Canadiens for the final playoff spot. They could be given another week to get in their games and they still wouldn't be getting in. And they know it.
No one was prouder than commissioner Gary Bettman was last year when he managed to complete the season in the middle of a pandemic with zero positive cases. That Tampa Bay ended up being the last team standing — and not Montreal or Chicago, who had no business being in the playoffs to begin with — should not have been overlooked.
This year, the challenges have been far greater. With no bubbles to protect the players, the COVID-19 cases have spread like a wildfire throughout the league.
Like the other leagues, the
NHL has forged on.
A look at which teams are in playoff spots suggests that the season hasn't been compromised.
Then again, it's worth noting that the teams who have been hit the hardest this year all happen to be ranked near the bottom of the standings.