Decision day is looming
But where will NHL decide to plant its hub city flags?
We will soon find out, any day now, where the National Hockey League intends to establish and fortify the strongholds necessary to launch the Stanley Cup playoffs in the middle of a global pandemic.
Where commissioner Gary Bettman decides to plant his Eastern and Western Conference flags has been a hotly contested debate for weeks, with all 10 teams on the league’s list of hub city contenders lobbying hard behind the scenes.
The league is wise to put off making a decision until the very last minute; COVID19 numbers are spiking all over the place, amid mass gatherings and civic unrest all over the United States, so locking into any city one second before they have to could be a fatal miscalculation that collapses the whole thing.
But we’re going to need an answer soon, and it will be interesting to see where the NHL decides to risk its $1 billion endeavour.
Some thoughts:
SAFETY FIRST?
The unofficial front-runners appear to be Las Vegas and Toronto. It’s been speculated that the hotel and entertainment situation in Vegas, and Toronto’s proximity to the centre of the universe, make them the likely picks.
If it’s true (the NHL hasn’t given indication either way, and the Edmonton Oilers say they haven’t been ruled in or out yet), it would seem to be in stark contrast to what Bettman has been saying from the very start of this highly ambitious process: That health and safety of the players is the NHL’s top priority.
If that’s the case, then rolling into Vegas makes no sense. It’s been less than two weeks since casinos opened and already the COVID-19 cases are spiking in record numbers — some 1,335 new cases reported in the last seven days, including 342 new cases on Tuesday for the largest single-day total since the pandemic began in March.
That hardly seems like the safest place to set up shop right now.
Toronto’s numbers aren’t good, either. They’re at 1,315 active cases, compared with 190 in Edmonton and 172 in the Vancouver area (although B.C. conducts less than half as many tests as Alberta does).
If the primary objective really is player safety — and preventing a billion dollars’ worth of revenue from being washed away by an outbreak inside the bubble — it doesn’t make much sense to put that bubble in the middle of a hot spot.
‘WAIVE’ GOODBYE
Can we stop with the chatter about the 14-day mandatory quarantine for people entering Canada being a potential roadblock for potential hub cities? Local governments can, should and will find an easy way around it for NHL players getting ready for the playoffs.
It’s not like these players are going to be drinking pints on Whyte Ave. or marching in protests. They’ll be locked in a quarantine bubble, tested daily and will have very limited exposure to the outside world.
Trust me, with everything they stand to lose if this thing collapses, the NHL is more concerned about keeping players away from the unwashed masses than any government is.
CLOCK IS TICKING
Just as teams begin to move forward in their return-toplay strategies comes a warning from Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease in the U.S.
Fauci says we shouldn’t be playing sports much past September because viruses tend to ramp up again when the weather gets cold and we might be in for a second wave when cold and flu season hits.
Now, government and health people have already been wrong on some pretty significant COVID issues (we were originally told that masks weren’t a good idea and that testing incoming airline passengers would do more psychological harm than medical good), so we have to take it all with a grain of salt.
But the NHL might want to hurry.
WE’VE GOT A RUNNER!
A lot of us still have a problem wrapping our heads around how teams that go deep in the playoffs will stay shuttered up in their hotel rooms for two months. Keeping young millionaires from breaking ranks and saying, “To heck with it, I’m going out tonight,” is a real concern in a situation where one player can bring down an entire team, and, thus, the entire playoffs.
The NBA is so worried about it they’ve established a snitch hotline to report players who violate safety protocols during their playoffs.
It gives you some idea of how delicate this balance really is.
IS LOCATION EVERYTHING?
From a fan’s perspective, it shouldn’t really matter where the games are played. If they can’t go into the arenas, won’t see players on the streets or in restaurants and will never get close enough for an autograph, who cares whether it’s in Edmonton or on UFC’s Fight Island in Abu Dhabi?
There will be some minor economic impact for hotel owners and prestige for the organization, as well as an opportunity to showcase facilities for potential free agents (Hey, Edmonton is kind of nice in the summer). But in a made-for-TV event, who really cares where the studio is?