| The National Hockey League has an audacious plan for finishing the 2019-20 season — knowledge of which was in the public sphere for less than a day before being called confusing, too big, too long, too inclusive and out of sync with the grand traditions of Lord Stanley and his fine old Cup by sports’ less charitable followers. All of those complaints would be absolutely, unequivocally, entirely with merit and justification, were it not for the unique scenario the sports world finds itself in. If any of the changes survive into future seasons, the NHL power brokers and commissioner Gary Bettman will have lost their collective minds. But, in these wild times of uncertainty and adaptation, the wacky, oversized, blown-up circus that the league is proposing, one where fully 24 out of 31 franchises have a shot at winning it all, is perfect.  Coming out of a crushing shutdown that it could neither have planned for nor mitigated, the league might have played it safe. Go into a 16-team postseason, have things pretty much as they were, maybe play a remaining few regular season games first, then shear a few games off next season to help with scheduling. The purists would have liked it, and rather than Lord Stanley rolling in his grave, he would have likely nodded sagely from up high in the hockey heavens. Instead, we have something different. Maybe not even better — just more appropriate for a warped reality that we will hopefully never know the likes of again. The NHL tossed tradition to one side, just this one time, and produced a plot that indicated it has actually listened. Hockey fans want hockey, and they’re going to get it. A lot of it.  Assuming medical clearance is obtained, teams ranked five to 12 in each conference will each take part in a play-in series, narrowing the field to 16. At that stage, the top four in each conference, who in the meantime will have played a round robin against each other to determine final seeding positions, will enter the fray. The games will take place at two separate city sites, the locations still to be determined. “As we seek some return to normalcy, this is an important day for NHL fans,” Bettman told reporters. “Since March 12, we’ve been hopeful and optimistic that by developing all options and alternatives, we could get to this point. I know I join sports fans everywhere when I say we cannot wait for the players to hit the ice again.” Hockey franchises need and want action — and most of them are going to get it. Teams that entered mid-March feeling they had a chance don’t want that opportunity to be robbed from them, and with this plan, they won’t. No one is unfairly disadvantaged. The top teams still will have to best four playoff opponents to secure the grand prize. Those near the top of the standings will still get to tussle for seeding priority, just like they would at the close of the regular campaign.  But yes, it does look different and feel different. It is not what hockey is used to, and that is entirely the point. To try to have a season that ends exactly as normal would seem absurd in some ways, like pretending that the last couple of months haven’t happened. It needs to be something new and something just for right now. It is likely to be replicated in some way in other American sports, too, as it should. The NBA is mulling over various plans, with Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban having put forward one that also involves 24 teams. Major League Soccer is likely to get innovative, as well, and is already looking over options. Every report surrounding Major League Baseball’s preferred plans mentions some kind of expanded playoff formula. The players can and will deal with the changes. “I just prefer to play hockey, I’ll be honest with you,” Boston Bruins captain Zdeno Chara told fans in a virtual chat session last week. “Whether it’s jumping into the playoffs or playing some sort of games to get ready for the playoffs, you just need to go with the flow.”  Yes, it is a bit confusing. The series will come thick and fast, and it is going to be tough to keep up. It is going to be a challenge to figure out what exactly the seeding games between the top teams before their elimination round all mean. It’ll be strange without fans, and it will be quirky to see neutral sites with empty seats and all that kind of stuff. It will be odd as hell to see the Stanley Cup hoisted amid such circumstances, and most of all, there will be so much hockey that it’s going to be tough to figure out what to watch. After all that has come before it, that seems like a pretty decent problem to have.  Here’s what others have said… Ken Campbell, Sports Illustrated: “We still don’t know which two cities will be chosen as the hub cities for the post-season. We don’t know whether or not the rounds after the play-in will be based on re-seedings or pre-determined brackets. We don’t know when any of this will actually be taking place. But for the first time since March 12 when the COVID-19 pandemic stopped the world in its tracks, we received a tidbit of hope that we’ll see hockey again, even if it’s played in the dead of summer. ‘Our fans are telling us in overwhelming numbers that they want us to complete the season if at all possible,’ Bettman said when he rolled out the plan. ‘And our players and our teams are clear that they want to play and bring the season to its rightful conclusion.’” Katie Baker, The Ringer: “The NHL is at once obsessed with its proud history and longstanding traditions and also has long been defined by its exceptions and idiosyncracies and odd bits of one-off trivia. (Even Wayne Gretzky was never technically drafted into the league!) Ten years from now, when we look back on the Summer of 2020, what will be the big topic? Will it mark the first of many Connor McDavid championships, or the last of many Edmonton Oilers first overall draft picks? Will we write think pieces about the long-term ramifications to the collective psyche of Toronto sports fans of winning an NBA title and then losing the team’s centerpiece followed immediately by winning a Cup avec asterisk and sans parade? Despite everyone’s best efforts, could the 10th-seeded Minnesota Wild win a Stanley Cup in their home rink? Or will John Tortorella win a Cup in Vancouver, as the elders once foretold—sort of? None of us can go by the old road maps anymore, and that includes the hockey gods.” NHL Players Association executive director Don Fehr (via ESPN): “There are certain things we know. If we cut the season at a certain date and limit the teams to 16 [playoff spots], you get a particular result. But even that raised questions, because some teams played more games than other teams, and the schedules were different at that point. Maybe you were ahead, but you had five or six rough games coming up. Or you were behind and you had a bunch of easy ones you thought you could win. So you started with that. Secondly, since the season wasn’t completed, the one thing we know for sure is that teams who had the possibility of qualifying, couldn’t. They didn’t have that chance. What you did was come up with, under all of these circumstances, something that is a reasonable approach to try and go forward.” |
