It is past time for the NHL to pause the season
For the health and safety of everyone involved, the NHL must put the 2020-21 season on pause immediately.
(Photo by Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)
The NHL has a COVID-19 crisis on their hands. On Tuesday, the NHL announced yet another game postponement — this time between the Philadelphia Flyers and Washington Capitals — due to an abundance of COVID-19 cases. We’ve now reached the 30-plus game postponement mark after the Buffalo Sabres, New Jersey Devils, and Minnesota Wild all had games moved this week due to the ongoing pandemic.
Since the announcement of the NHL’s return for the 2020-21 season, at least 24 of the NHL’s 31 teams have had players or staff spend time on the league’s COVID-19 protocol list. Less than one month into the new season, every division but the NHL’s North Division — the league’s all-Canada division this year — has been impacted by game postponements as well.
To say things are looking grim for the NHL right now would be… an understatement. The NHL proudly touted the league’s COVID-less 24-team playoff bubble last summer where the Stanley Cup was awarded to the Tampa Bay Lightning. The shortened 56-game 2020-21 season, however, has been fraught with COVID outbreaks and game postponements since before the teams were able to step foot on the ice.
While the NHL has modified its COVID protocols for teams — from removing the glass behind the benches for improved airflow to creating more space in the dressing room — the league’s steps have not nearly been harsh enough to curb the pandemic’s hold on the season. Which is why it is past time for the NHL to shut things down and pause the 2020-21 season for a few weeks.
(This, of course, goes without saying that the NHL shouldn’t have even had a season in the first place given the state of the pandemic, but the league made its bed with its decision and here we are.)
I’m not the first person — nor will I be the last — to plead for the NHL to take a few weeks off in the midst of a global pandemic. While cases across the United States have been trending downward for some time, approximately 9.7 percent of the population has been vaccinated with 1.4 million shots being administered each day. Of course, those numbers are expected to rise in the weeks to come, but it will likely be some time before the NHL and its players will have access to the vaccine.
With the NHL failing to put a lid on this issue, and with the cases and postponements piling up, the league needs to put the season on pause immediately. The case can be made that the North Division could continue to play, since it has yet to be impacted by COVID-19 in the same way as the rest of the league, but just one slip up could cause the whole thing to collapse in a matter of days.
The NHL built into its season the ability to shuffle games around should postponements occur, but we’re reaching the point where there will be too many games to play in too short a time, if the league is able to control the virus at all. Pausing the season and shutting down team facilities for two weeks gives the NHL time to stop the spread between teams while also coming up with more concrete restrictions for the league going forward.
While the players refused to bubble up for the 2020-21 season, something is clearly wrong with the NHL’s process for this season. Just this week, the NBA — which is dealing with the same indoor issue as the NHL is — announced that there were no new cases across the league. This comes after the NBA had nearly 30 players test positive in a two-week span of January. Since then, only one player has tested positive.
According to ESPN, the NBA has since been more strict in its mandates to combat COVID-19, and so far the league has turned a corner:
Teams are still dealing with strict rules to keep the numbers as low as possible, testing remains ramped up and the league told clubs earlier this week that it is installing even tougher rules on mask usage, including in bench areas during games. There have been some mild adjustments to tougher rules regarding travel that went into place last month, but most of the additional protocols remain in effect.
The NHL should take a page out of the NBA’s book here. While the NBA did not need to shut the league down to get a handle on the virus, the NHL is well past the point of no return in terms of cases. Forced masked mandates, stricter travel rules, and more would likely go a long way in terms of curbing the virus’ hold on the league.
However, at the end of the day, the NHL needs to pause the season and they need to do it now. The NHL’s 56-game schedule can be cut down to 48 games for each team — the same as in the lockout-shortened 2012-13 season that also started in January. If 48 games can’t be played for each team, use points percentage to determine postseason spots. And even though the players would push back on the idea after last summer, bubbling the Stanley Cup Playoffs this season is not a bad thought either.
The best time to pause the 2020-21 NHL season would have been when an outbreak hit the Dallas Stars in training camp. The second best time would have been when the NHL and New Jersey failed to provide the Sabres sufficient information about the Devils outbreak, an outbreak that saw Buffalo head coach Ralph Krueger test positive. The third best time would have been when reports surfaced in late January that 19-year-old Wild forward Marco Rossi would be unable to play this season due to COVID-19 complications.
We are now past time for the NHL to pause the season, for everyone’s health and safety. In the end, we can only hope that the league will do the right thing.
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