Bubble won’t return for full ’20-21 season
The EDMONTON,ALBERTA —
64 days spent in the NHL playoff bubble feel like six months to BarclayGoodrow.
“It’s tough,” the Tampa Bay Lightning forward said. “It’s been a grind.”
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 quarantined bubbles.
“Certainly not for a season, of course not,” NHLPA executive director Don Fehr told TheAssociated Press on Sunday. “Nobody is going to do that for four months or six months or something like that. Whetherwe could create some protected environments that peoplewould be tested and they’d be clean whenthey cameinandlasted forsomesubstantiallyshorter 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 allowedintobuildingsatsome capacity at some point.
AweekafterCommissioner Gary Bettman said a midto-late December or January start was possible, Fehr agreed that the tentative 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 the myriad of questions hockey faces in trying to get another season going. Andwhile that and negotiations will begin quickly, the league and players are on the same page, that just like the return to play plan, they want to take time to get this right.
It helps theNHL has some time and an opportunity to monitor the NFL, Major League Baseball and college athletics for what’s working and not working in those sports.
But the NHL is the most dependent on attendance, which Bettman said affects at least 50% of revenues. It needs fans, but might not be able to get them in all 31 buildings.
“Onwhateverbasiswemay or may not be able to have fans in our buildings issomethingthatmaybewellbeyond our control in terms of local government regulations that will determine how much the shortfall is off of where we were and off of where we were projecting,” Bettman said Sept. 19.
The league and players negotiated a long-term extension of the collective bargaining agreement knowing projections for at least next season would be much different given the global pandemic. Ifeachteamcan’t play 82 games with some fans at somepoint, everyoneis likely to take an even bigger financial hit than expected, which could affect player salaries.