A lot went into Toronto’s hub city bid
Toronto and the National Hockey League had plenty of work when it came to choosing Hogtown as a hub city, but it doesn’t seem the Stanley Cup will be raised here by the Maple Leafs or anyone else.
While Toronto and Edmonton are awaiting official designation as the two hosts for the 24-team tournament, a tweet from TSN’S Bob Mckenzie on Thursday said the Alberta capital is the favourite to stage the best-of-seven conference finals and championship rounds.
Both burgs will get 12 respective Eastern and Western Conference teams in their towns, playing four best-of-five qualifying rounds while the top four teams get byes and go into a round-robin event to determine future seeding. The surviving eight teams then go to first- and second-round series that are best-of-sevens. But if Edmonton is indeed to be the site of the final, the two Eastern survivors will head there.
It still means a few weeks of business in Toronto, with the Washington Capitals, Pittsburgh Penguins, Montreal Canadiens and Boston Bruins and others around, albeit in bubble environments of hotels around Scotiabank Arena and alternate rinks such as Coca-cola Coliseum on the fairly remote Exhibition grounds. Up to 50 staff members per team can travel to Toronto and all are designated a cohort quarantine, not subject to the federal government’s 14-day isolation rule for visitors.
Toronto’s medical officer of health, Dr. Eileen de Villa, said she was satisfied with the plan the NHL presented her to keep up its part of the COVID-19 prevention bargain.
“The issue was what would be the process by which to insure the players stayed within the context of a bubble, for their protection and the protection of the city,” she said, “insuring there were appropriate protocols and all good measures, both for the players and staff of those teams and that the residents are protected.”
Mayor John Tory expected to hear some criticism that the city was making too many concessions to the NHL — and by extension, the Blue Jays who have returned home from Florida to train — when other aspects of city life remain locked down in the early stages of COVID-19 recovery.
“It’s a judgment call,” Tory said. “If you want to be critical, you can be critical of all three governments (civic, provincial and federal, in concert with Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Ltd. in the case of the NHL) who’ve worked extremely closely together on this. You try to see if there are going to be these sports spectacles taking place that are going to be a lot of interest to a lot of people in Toronto and beyond, that they can take place in our city.
“Right now, people are yearning for positives. One might argue that those (hockey and baseball games) will be on TV without spectators and say,
‘What difference does it make?’ But I feel good that the hockey and the Jays might come here.”
Tory said he was “impressed” the NHL had a detailed plan of its own to disinfect its designated areas, while one of the issues going back and forth was defining the exact bubble.
“There were concerns that were understood completely.
You bring a number of teams and players in and whether or not you’re playing, you’re going to be inside a given hotel. What if they want to go outside for a walk, or just have some fresh air? There really had to be some considerations to what we can do to help facilitate that. We gave answers, always with the thought that we wanted to try to put our best foot forward and be named a (hub) city, but at the same time not adversely impact the general public who also need access to fresh air.”