Clock ticking on Stanley Cup playoffs
Post-season should have started next week
Saturday night was supposed to wrap the 2019-20 National Hockey League regular season.
Once the Anaheim Ducks and San Jose Sharks had completed game No. 1,271, the eight playoff series would be set, draft lottery odds finalized, the Presidents’ Trophy determined and individual awards such as the Art Ross, Rocket Richard and Jennings Trophies would also be sent to the silversmith for etching.
By Sunday, the league would have held its final conference call with playoff team reps and broadcast execs from Rogers and NBC to set schedules, potential doubleheaders, start times and arena building availability, a process that league senior vice- president Steve Hatze Petros would have been working on weeks earlier.
One or two clubs, usually from the Central Time Zone, would be upset at being asked to move puck drop ahead or back to accommodate viewers in the East, but in general, playoff fever would take hold, with thousands skiving off work to complete pool picks approaching mid-week.
Instead, the dormant league is in uncharted territory, hung up between a schedule that’s 85 per cent in the books and God knows how long before its last 189 games are played and when — or if — there will be a Stanley Cup tournament.
When the global nightmare of COVID-19 passes — medical experts fear the worst is still to come — most expect the league will be uncomfortably close to what it wished to avoid, 2019-20 conflicting with ’20-21.
As of this weekend, the clock starts ticking toward the prospect of hockey in July or August. That would enable the league to finish this season — or at least bring all teams to a uniform number of games played, maybe 75 to a full 82 each. That would decide close playoff races, such as Carolina and the New York Islanders, currently playing two less games than Columbus and Toronto, potential wins that would qualify both pursuers.
Sentiment — and business sense — would be to find a way to save the playoffs and awarding the Cup, either by getting in some or all remaining games or advance the top 16 by raw points or points percentage as of March 11. Under the latter system, the Isles would be ranked ahead of Toronto, .588 to .578.
On the other hand, two firstround series as they stand would be rekindled rivalries between the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers, and the Philadelphia Flyers and Pittsburgh Penguins. Whatever post- season formula is adopted would allow owners their gate receipts, so the players’ CBA escrow payments don’t suffer as much and networks will get their audience back, better late than never. NBC, having lost a huge cash cow with cancellation of the Tokyo Olympics, could recoup some summer programming.
But such ideas will require a buy- in by the NHLPA. The union would be asked to agree on two re- jigged schedules, possibly starting the new season as late as Nov. 1, pruning events such as allstar week. Still to be decided is how the league works in the amateur draft and start of its July 1 fiscal year for player contracts around such potential variances.
A lesser problem for the league, but one sure to stir up fans, is what to do with uneven individual statistics on the table from games played Oct. 2 to March 11.
“I think you just have to leave them, like baseball did in its (1994) strike cancellation year,” said Kevin Gibson, who heads TSN’S hockey stats department. “You have to say ‘ this was the season, these are the numbers.’ I don’t see how you can take them away.”
There might not be enough asterisks to go around when future debates arise about Alex Ovechkin, who is now two goals short of reaching 50 for a ninth season to tie Wayne Gretzky and Mike Bossy. Auston Matthews of the Toronto Maple Leafs had Rick Vaive’s club mark of 54 goals in his sights as well.
Gibson would at least prefer all teams to have played the same amount of games when looking back on such records.
“This is a tough one for everybody,” he said.
YOU HAVE TO SAY ‘THIS WAS THE SEASON, THESE ARE THE NUMBERS.’ — KEVIN GIBSON, TSN