Report: NHL owners considering cancelling entire 2020-21 season

A nuclear response from NHL owners. Thoughts?

HockeyFeed
HockeyFeed
Published 3 years ago
Report: NHL owners considering cancelling entire 2020-21 season
Zuma Press

Everyone is going through a tough time during the ongoing pandemic and I can't blame a single fan of the National Hockey League if their concerns right now do not include the financial health of the league. That being said it now sounds like things may be much worse than we had originally anticipated. 

According to a stunning report from ESPN's Greg Wyshynski and Emily Kaplan, there are some owners that have approached NHL commissioner Gary Bettman with the express purpose of discussing the possibility of shutting down the 2020 - 2021 season entirely to avoid financial catastrophe. From ESPN:

According to several sources, a few owners have suggested to Bettman that the league might be better off financially if it shuts down next season, since playing in empty arenas could be crippling to the bottom line. The NHL is still very much a gate-driven league in comparison to a league like the NFL, which draws most of its revenue from media rights. 

If the owners are coming forward to make these types of suggestions than I think it is safe to say that things are considerably worse than we had imagined. As ESPN correctly states the NHL is heavily dependant on ticket revenue in order to meet their bottom line and with no guarantees that they will be able to have fans in their arenas next season that could mean another wave of financial losses for the league's owners. Thankfully it sounds like cooler heads are going to prevail in this scenario. 

According to ESPN it sounds as though Bettman himself has rebuffed those demands, stating explicitly that the damage caused by skipping a season would do far more to harm the league in the long term than playing out a season in empty arenas would in the short term. The league has had the experience in the past due to locking out a season over contract disputes, so I do think that Bettman is speaking from a position of both knowledge and experience in this scenario.

I would hate to have to miss out on yet another NHL season in my lifetime, especially given that for me personally I was left a little unfulfilled after the NHL's most recent campaign. 

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