NHL Players could return to their home rinks this month,.

Over the past several days the National Hockey League has seemingly ramped up its plan to resume the 2019 - 2020 National Hockey League regular season with reports today that high ranking officials at the NHL will meet on Tuesday to discuss the bids from cities that will potentially host regular season games for the NHL when the season does resume, as well as reports from last week that the league sent out a memo late last week to teams indicating that it would likely be holding a draft in early June.

This seems to have accelerated the schedule for a return considerably and now a report from the Associated Press has just revealed that under the most aggressive timeline we could see players back in their home arenas as soon as just two weeks from now, and a return to actual NHL games roughly 2 months away from now as well. Keep in mind this is under the most aggressive timeline, it may very well be that restrictions from local governments will push this back.

From the AP:

A person familiar with discussions told The Associated Press that the most aggressive timetable would have players returning to their home rinks as early as May 15, followed by a training camp and possible exhibition games in June.

Under that timeline, the regular season would resume in July with the Stanley Cup final likely stretching into September.

I must admit that this is much earlier than I would have expected to see players return to camp, but with many major cities easing restrictions in recent days it may very well be that the NHL will feel confident moving forward that things will open up quickly for them. Keep in mind that although there is no doubt that every safety precaution will be taken, many of these cities have suffered tremendous financial impacts as a result of our current situation and would very much like the kind of cash injection that hosting the NHL at this time would bring. Players, training staff, coaches, general managers, executives, and television crews will need to be housed, fed, and cared for and the cities otherwise empty arenas will actually see some use.