NHL won’t bring bubble back in 2021

EDMONTON — The 64 days spent in the NHL playoff bubble feel like six months to Barclay Goodrow.

“It’s been a grind,” the Tampa Bay Lightning forward said.

It’s a grind he and players won’t do again next season. The league and Players’ Association will meet within the next two weeks to discuss the many possibilities of what the 2020-21 season could look like, but there’s no desire to stage it entirely within bubbles.

“Certainly not for a season, of course not,” NHLPA executive director Don Fehr said Sunday. “Nobody is going to do that for four months or six months or something like that. Whether we could create some protected environments that people would be tested and they’d be clean when they came in and lasted for some substantially shorter period of time with people cycling in and out is one of the things I suspect we will examine.”

Not long after the Stanley Cup is awarded, the two sides will talk about when next season might start, how many games might be possible, what testing and protocols might be required and whether fans might be allowed into buildings at some capacity at some point.

A week after commissioner Gary Bettman said a mid-to-late December or January start was possible, Fehr agreed Dec. 1 opening night target date was the “earliest conceivable date” the season could start and there’s good reason to believe it’ll be later.

The NHLPA is in the process of finalizing a committee to start answering questions hockey faces in trying to get another season going. And while that and negotiations will begin quickly, the league and players are on the same page, that just like the return to play, they want to get this right.