NHL’s expected plans to reschedule all postponed games revealed

The NHL has been dealing with several schedule issues - in the past week alone, more than a dozen games have been postponed amidst the league-wide pause taking place from Dec. 22-26.

On Tuesday’s Insider Trading on TSN, Pierre LeBrun revealed the plan to make up these games, though he was clear it all remains in the works seeing that more changes could come to the calendar.

But this is what he revealed as far as options for rescheduling all those postponed games:

“The schedule maker, we’re told, is already at work. I heard from a couple teams today that say they heard from Steve Hatze Petros, who is the schedule maker for the NHL, about a heads-up, saying, hey at some point soon we’re going to need your updated building dates, obviously for that three-week gap in February where there’s no longer going to be the Olympic Games. But, it goes beyond just trying to reschedule all the games that have been cancelled, some teams have’t had games postponed because of COVID but you can’t have those teams sit on the sidelines for three weeks in February while all the other teams get their rescheduled games played. There’s going to have to be a redux of things, really, for all 32 teams so that there’s some rhythm to the season, and no one gets left behind. So, it’s a more complicated process than it sounds like on the surface, if it wasn’t already complicated enough. The other thing is, I don’t think you’ll see the league come out and announce its revamped schedule for a bit here, because we know that there’s going to be more cancellations, more COVID situations over the next few weeks, well into January, so I think the league will wait at least until mid-January before coming out and saying, okay here’s how the rest of the season potentially looks like.”

Chris Johnston also provides some thoughts on what the NHL could choose to do with the All-Star Game and what’s happening backstage in the complicated plans of the NHL to make up time:

“One place they can find a few more days to stage those games if they wanted, would be the start of February when the all-star game is due to be in Las Vegas, but I’m told at this point in time that’s not even on the table, it’s all systems go, in fact some believe it might even be easier now to send the players to Vegas and have that all-star weekend with Beijing out of the picture. It just removes some complications due to travel, that way, and so it looks as though the all-star game will go ahead as things stand right now. The other thing that hasn’t been discussed, is potentially lengthening the end of the regular season. Basically from Dec. 27 to April 29 you’re looking at about 119 days available to Steven Hatze Petros to fill out that schedule and at least as we’re sitting here now, they feel that can get in the 82-game schedule with that amount of time remaining.”

This sounds complicated, and while players aren’t on the ice, you have to believe the NHL, Players Association and owners are hard at work to get the 2021-22 season back on track.