NHL FARM TEAMS’ CHANCES OF RETURN RUNNING OUT OF ROPE
Season likely over as gate-driven league has no television deals to pay the freight
The Belleville Senators will likely have to live by that familiar sports refrain: Wait until next year.
As the pause due to the global threat of the novel coronavirus enters its ninth week, the American Hockey League’s board of governors held a conference call Friday afternoon to discuss whether to cancel the rest of the season and the playoffs.
No official announcement from the AHL is expected to be made until Monday morning. However, the belief going into the meeting was with the league on pause since March 12, there wasn’t much sense in letting a decision drag on much longer because the reality is playing into the summer isn’t an option for the NHL’S top minor-league affiliates. The word is the call lasted less than 20 minutes.
While the NHL, with its television deals, can return to empty rinks in July to help minimize the losses of not playing, it makes zero financial sense for the AHL to follow the same route. It is a gate-driven league and since the AHL wouldn’t be able to sell any tickets, it would be costly to try to bring everybody back.
In a conversation earlier this week, an NHL executive estimated that 75 to 85 per cent of the revenues for AHL teams are generated by ticket sales and the rest comes from sponsorships. There’s no big television money on the way, so the AHL has nothing it can do to cut down on the losses teams will already take by not having the playoffs.
This will be a hard hit for Belleville, Ottawa’s farm team, because the baby Senators were on the verge of making the playoffs for the first time since arriving in the city to start the 2017-18 campaign. Belleville was close to a spot in the post-season last year, but was eliminated by the Toronto Marlies on the final day of the regular season. This year, the Senators were sitting in the top spot in their division.
There are too many hurdles for the AHL to overcome, including getting players back from overseas. In the case of Belleville, for example, goalies Filip Gustavsson and Marcus Hogberg are back in Sweden along with defenceman Andreas Englund, while centre Filip Chlapik is in Prague. Blue-liner Erik Brannstrom is also back in Sweden.
That doesn’t mean this season is over for all the Belleville players, however, since some could be brought back to make up a taxi squad if Ottawa does return to finish its season next month.
But the big club isn’t sure if it’s going to be back, either. The NHL sent out a memo Thursday telling teams they likely wouldn’t be opening facilities until early June and that teams shouldn’t be making plans with the players in Europe to come back.
The NHL is studying all its options to bring teams back when it’s safe to do so, and there are indications now that the leading scenario would see 24 teams return sometime next month for a shortened training camp before resuming the season sometime in July. Options for bringing all the teams or just the 16 in the playoff picture are also on the table.
Under that scenario, Ottawa, Detroit, San Jose, Los Angeles, Anaheim, New Jersey and Buffalo would be done for the year. The speculation is under the 24-team return, there would be a play-in round for the teams ranked from No. 16 to No. 24 to decide which squads would go to the post-season that would get underway in early August.
Ottawa players who have spoken publicly since the pause got underway have maintained they’re staying ready in case the league does return, but aren’t sure what’s going to happen. A couple of members of the Montreal Canadiens have stated they’d rather not come back and would rather focus on next season, while Kings defenceman Drew Doughty said publicly he doesn’t believe non-playoff teams should continue.
Still, it has to be noted that this seems to change hourly, weekly and even monthly, so don’t rule out the possibility of all 31 teams coming back. But if there’s no clearance from health authorities in Canada and the U.S., then the league may have to cancel the season altogether.