NHL’S COVID CUP?
24-team format would be a tough road: Jones
There are those who contend there is not a more difficult trophy to win in all of professional team sports than hockey’s Stanley Cup.
But now there may be a tougher one than being the survivor of the annual marathon involving four best-of-seven series, often featuring games going two and three overtime periods with offthe-charts physical combat.
That would be the NHL’S 2020 COVID Cup.
OK, there wouldn’t be the exhausting travel of 2-2-1-1-1 playoff series this year with two hub cities featuring 12 teams each, playing host to all of the games.
But otherwise …
Think about the concept Connor Mcdavid and the ‘Return To Play’ committee put in front of the 31 NHL player reps for conference-call voting that looks to be accepted.
There would be no further regular-season play to determine the 16 teams advancing to the playoffs, as previously proposed.
Instead, the playoffs would be expanded from 16 to 24 teams featuring eight proposed best-offive play-in series to advance to the traditional bet-of-sevens.
For all six Canadian teams involved, that would require winning 19 playoff games instead of 16. If this format is adopted for these playoffs to begin, there will be a huge focus on two play-in series in particular.
Both the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Edmonton Oilers would be meeting one-per-cent chanceto-make-the-playoffs entities such as Carey Price and the Montreal Canadiens and Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews and the Chicago Blackhawks, respectively.
Forget those actual series. Think of the buildup to get to them.
What we’re going to be dealing with here is the longest advance analysis to each of those series in Stanley Cup playoff history.
Normally, the matchups aren’t set until the final weekend of regular-season play. But now, the fans and media will have maybe 45 days to analyze the living bleep out of it.
You have 14-day quarantine periods in many NHL cities for players arriving from other nations, a period of a week or so to begin four- or five-player groupings to begin skating again and three-week training camps.
The NHL is going to need to have these series going by
July 23. That’s the day the opening ceremony was scheduled for the Tokyo Olympics and this will be the primary replacement programming for Olympic Games TV rightsholder NBC.
So, I guess the first thing you should know is these best-offives all look like toss-ups.
The home team in the Edmonton-chicago
games won all three. The Blackhawks won 4-3 and
3-1 in Chicago and lost 5-3 in Edmonton. The Penguins won 4-1 and 3-2 and lost 4-1 to Montreal. The Maple Leafs split with the Blue Jackets, winning 4-1 and 8-6 and losing 6-3 and 4-3 in overtime, while the Canucks lost two of three against the Wild, winning 4-1 and losing 4-2 and 4-3 in OT. The Jets and Flames only met once all season, a 2-1 OT win for Winnipeg. Two other scheduled games were lost to the shutdown.
But as I suggest, there’s plenty of time for all of that.
What fascinates me most right now is the hub-city concept, especially if Edmonton wins the bid.
You could make the case that without atmosphere and the intensity of fans and some of the conditions likely involved, maybe the COVID Cup might be the opposite of how I project it. Maybe it’ll just be one big friendly TV show.
First of all, the players are going to have to promise not to spit, scrum after whistles, provide face-washes — not to mention face-licking by Boston’s Brad Marchand — or hug each other and the like when they score goals.
Spitting chiclets would almost certainly be prohibited.
With two NHL hub cities and not including the Stanley Cup Final itself, each hub would play host to a minimum of 46 games and maximum of 68. The hope would be to do it in 60 days.
There’s talk the Oilers are getting creative in attempting to win the bid by securing a golf course, like maybe the nearby Royal Mayfair to provide tee times for teams on their off-days. On the first tee, the Mcdavid foursome. On deck, the Kane foursome?
There’s also talk of turning the newly created Ice District over to the players so they can sit outside on a perfect Alberta evening and watch the other games on big-screen video boards.
Hey, with only 50 active cases remaining in Edmonton, there’s no reason to lock the teams up and force them to sit in their rooms and play solitaire all day, especially if they sweep a series and have a week to wait before starting the next one.
You have to wonder what the new normal level of legendary Stanley Cup hatred would be?
The players are going to have to promise not to spit, scrum after whistles, provide face-washes ...