Players add new rule to playoff tournament!

This one won’t be easy…

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Published 3 years ago
Players add new rule to playoff tournament!
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A few weeks ago, it was revealed how the National Hockey League was setting up all 24 teams heading into the hub cities for the playoff tournament. TSN’s Bob McKenzie even revealed information on hotel assignments and how teams would be split up. 

“Twelve teams are going to be in Edmonton and 12 will in Toronto. You have to allocate hotels to create these bubbles that we’ve been talking so much about. In Toronto, there’s going to be five teams staying at Hotel X, which is on the Exhibition grounds. Those teams are the top five in the Eastern Conference, points percentage-wise. This is a merit-based system in terms of the hotels teams get. The other seven teams from the East will be at the Royal York hotel downtown, and both hotels will be fully locked down. Out West, the top six teams will stay at the JW Marriott, right alongside the rink in Edmonton. The other six teams will stay at the Sutton Place hotel downtown.”

We got to know more on the secure zones, yesterday, as the NHL held a conference calls to explain how the players and staff will have access to a concierge service where they can get deliveries from pharmacies, grocery stores and restaurants.



This is a plan that quickly came up together for the amount of organizing it needed, but the NHL appeared to have forgotten one important thing which the players made clear on Friday. However, this new rule will be a tough one, seeing how crowded the secure zones in Toronto and Edmonton will be.

“Players that will stay in hotels in the hub cities, starting Monday, don’t want to have any interaction with players from another team. That’s what the NHL said today in a conference call,” said reporter Renaud Lavoie of TVA Sports. 


While we can’t blame the NHL from trying to keep players from different teams apart, you have to admit it sounds pretty difficult to do in a restricted area. But we can understand however that players don’t want to mingle when they are all fighting for the same thing: to get their hands on the Stanley Cup. 

However Boston Bruins' Patrice Bergeron just admitted it might be hard to give rivals the silence treatment when crossing paths at the hotel. 

"Saying hi doesn't mean that you're not going to compete on the ice."


Let's see how they make it work! 

Source: TVA Sports