Tight deadline for the NHL to get this done if not season won’t start on Jan. 1st!

Nothing has been set in stone - on either a format or start date for the upcoming season of the National Hockey League, however, one thing is clear: the clock is ticking. 

And we might already be running out of time, especially with training camps tentatively scheduled to begin in one month’s time for a New Year’s Day start.

As Pierre LeBrun of TSN and The Athletic reports on Tuesday, “if there’s early January puck drop, that means getting this done by the end of the month. As we saw in the spring/summer, these things can drag out, but the hope is that if there’s an agreement it’s within the next 7-10 days.”

While a 16-player Return to Play committee has gotten together and talking with the NHL, there are still a lot of important things they need to agree on, format, schedule, hub cities and number of games on the calendar. And you know the latter has a huge impact of the players’ salaries, and we know they will fight for it as they might not get past the pro-rated salaries issue. As of now, it sounds like a 60-game calendar has been discussed. 

LeBrun believes that will be the biggest issue, which won’t help the tight deadline, as players will need to be convinced, which “might require some delicate stick-handling from Bettman with some of his owners.”

We still have no clue how their decision will impact fans and the possibility of them attending games throughout the season. It sounds like teams would be permitted to have fans in their arenas in limited capacities as dictated by local and regional health authorities, which would help revenues. However, we will have to wait and see what COVID has to say about that and how players and staff can remain healthy for the entire season, without compromising the health of fans. 

A lot still on the table, which will need to get ironed out in this tight deadline if we want the season to kick off on January, 1st.