Camps open with a sense of urgency
Teams have just 8 days before puck drops Jan. 13
Peter Laviolette pulled the mask away from his face to bark out instructions while pointing every which way with his stick, then put the mask back on and skated around to show his new players what to do.
It was the first day of training camp for Laviolette and the Washington Capitals and most of the NHL. With the regular season starting next week, there’s no time to waste. Camps are now open for the league’s 31 teams and they will last just nine days.
There are no exhibition games to tune up before the pucks drop for real.
“There’s so many things that you want to touch on, and the time is limited,” Laviolette said after the first on-ice session Monday. “It’s almost like fear when you get home that maybe you didn’t get everything done or you didn’t get in what you were supposed to get done.”
While the seven teams that didn’t make the playoffs got a few days’ head start, everyone will be in the same grind when the season
begins Jan. 13. After completing last season in quarantined bubbles, hockey will open the season with the coronavirus pandemic still raging for a 56-game regular season scheduled to run until May 8.
“You get a fresh start,” said Jeff Skinner of the Buffalo Sabres, who haven’t played a game since March. “When you get to take a lot of time off, it sort of builds that anticipation to when you can get back, and now we’re here and it’s an exciting time.”
It’s also different. Coaches couldn’t meet with players in person until
camp, there are health and safety protocols to follow and there is daily COVID -19 testing.
Columbus Blue Jackets coach John Tortorella said he’d emphasize a major point to players about how to approach training and playing this season: “There is no complaining about anything.”
That includes the length of camp, which is even shorter than eight years ago when a lockout cut the season to 48 games. Few seem worried about no preseason games.
“Most players would argue that camps are a little bit long anyway,” Winnipeg Jets captain Blake Wheeler said. “It’ll be nice to get right to it, get up to game speed as fast as we can and then hit the ice for games that matter.”
Rather than beginning camp with a hectic scramble among several groups at their practice facility, Sidney Crosby and the Pittsburgh Penguins worked inside spacious PPG Paints Arena.
“Almost everything feels different, to be honest with you, as far as the surroundings and wearing masks and socially distancing,” he said. “But the excitement and the anticipation feels the same with getting ready to play.”
Stars like Winnipeg ’s Patrik Laine and Columbus’ Pierre-luc Dubois took the ice after an offseason of questions about whether they would still be with their teams.