`IT'S TIME FOR SOME GOOD LUCK'
Players' association head feels confident NHL can pull off season outside bubble
As Donald Fehr looks toward the a new calendar year and all the promises of hope that it brings, the head of the National Hockey League Players' Association is optimistic about what lies ahead.
Fehr believes the shortened regular season will begin as planned on Jan. 13. He is confident that with the global administration of a vaccine for COVID-19, more and more fans will be allowed into hockey arenas by the time the playoffs start in the spring. And he expects that whatever is waiting around the corner — whether it's a rash of positive cases or provincial closures or something even worse — that the league and the players will adapt and roll with the punches.
At the same time, he's also not leaving anything up to chance.
“I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed, as we all are,” Fehr said in a phone interview with Postmedia News. “Stay out of harm's way. Don't do anything stupid just because things are starting to look better. But we've been through so much, it's time for some good luck.”
Fans received a healthy dose of that on Dec. 24 when NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly announced the league had reached an agreement for their teams to play in Canada. Teams still won't be able to cross over the border. But the pieces are finally set for a 56-game regular season, which includes an all-canadian North Division.
Now, comes the hard part: actually pulling it off.
As much as the NHL would like to point to the success of the playoffs as proof that the league can begin the regular season in the middle of a pandemic, what the NHL has planned is not exactly bubble hockey.
There won't be any hub cities this time around. Teams will be travelling across state and provincial lines, entering areas that have varying degrees of COVID-19 levels. And they will be doing it for more than just a couple of months. It seems inevitable that players are going to contract the virus and some games will probably get postponed. But with the vaccine now available, it also seems inevitable that cases within Canada and the U.S. will soon start to decrease.
Then again, it might not happen as quickly as everyone wants it to.
What if things don't get better right away? What if they get worse? What if the players, who will be sharing buildings with the NBA, start contracting the coronavirus at levels that force the league into not only postponing games but also re-evaluating its plan on playing out the season?
Will the league use hub cities for the entire season? Will it cut short an already shortened season?
Rather than get into a discussion about hypotheticals, Fehr talks about what he knows.
“First of all, in terms of a shortened season, we know that works because we did it in '12-13,” he said. “The second thing is what we went through in the summer really gave us a window on how to construct the edifice of rules and regulations and recommendations and testing and medical availability and all the rest of it that you need to keep people safe while you do this. And we've got a lot of co-operation from everybody and everybody learned to respect the process and the rules.”
Respect, along with “co-operation” and “trust,” is a word that Fehr uses a lot. The playoffs, in which the NHL did not have a single positive case of COVID-19, showed that the players respected the rules and took this situation seriously. They didn't sneak out of the bubble or sneak anyone in. They wore masks and social distanced. They bought in.
The NHL will need that continued level of buy-in from the players if the 2020-21 season is going to be a success.
“It does make it easier in the sense that people are saying, `OK, we've got to do regular testing, we've got to observe social distancing, we have to wear masks at the appropriate opportunities, we have to be co-operative, we have to be flexible,'” said Fehr.
“All that helps. And having gone through that last summer, it gives the players a degree of confidence too as well as the staff that we can pull this off.”
There's also the very real threat hanging over the players' heads: fail to take this seriously and you won't just be quarantined for 14 days — you could be tossed into a bubble.
“Nobody would willingly say I'm not going to see my family or my kids for six or seven months,” Fehr said of the players' reluctance to play in a bubble again. “Nobody would do that. Nobody's asking them to do that.”
At least, not yet they aren't.
The NBA, which like the NHL held its playoffs in a bubble, began its regular season this past week. Already, a game has been postponed after several players tested positive for COVID-19, while Houston Rockets guard James Harden was fined for violating the NBA'S rules because he attended a private indoor party.
Those sorts of headlines hurt the NHL. But while Fehr is keeping his eye on what the other leagues are doing, he believes the NHL should be held to a higher standard.
“I think we stand on our own,” Fehr said. “Our reputation is going to be related by what we do — not what someone else has done. I tend to look at some of the more sensationalistic stories with a grain of salt.”
For now, Fehr is crossing his fingers and his toes. And he is hoping that by this time next year we are looking back at what was another successful playoffs.
“We're all hoping that it's going to roll out without kinks or with as little kinks as possible and we can soon put this pandemic behind us,” he said. “The real question will be when we look back at this in two, three or five years and (ask:) Did we reasonably respond?” From my part and from Gary (Bettman's) part, I think, the answer so far is `Yes.'”
Nobody would willingly say I'm not going to see my family or my kids for six or seven months ... Nobody's asking them to do that.