There are reasons the New York Rangers and the NHL shouldn’t finish this season
All of the hockey talk over the last few weeks has been centered on the expanded 24-team playoff format and the steps the league is taking to get the players back on the ice. In looking at the time frame for starting to play real games it may not be practical for the New York Rangers and the NHL to even try.
On Memorial Day, the NHL provided all teams with the protocols for resuming informal workouts meaning that sometime in early June there will be New York Rangers on the ice at the team practice facility in Greenburgh, New York.
In looking at the scheduling challenges facing the NHL it appears that the league is desperate to complete the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the 2019-20 season. Should it be at the expense of future seasons and the health of its employees?
An insane schedule
Phase 2 of the NHL’s return-to-play protocol will allow players to use a team’s practice facility for workouts and to get back on the ice. As positive a step as that it, it is completely voluntary and will limit the number of athletes to six or fewer at a time. This phase is scheduled to begin sometime in early June.
Getting the players back to the practice facility locations is a challenge in itself. It’s not a problem if the player lives nearby, but if he has to fly back to New York via public transportation (commercial airline) he must self-quarantine for 14 days. That means in order for players who are currently overseas to be able to take part in informal workouts in early June, they need to leave today.
Kaapo Kakko is in Finland. If he flies from Helsinki to New York on Wednesday, May 27 he won’t be able to go out of his home until June 10 at the earliest. That’s if flights are even available. With the limitations on international travel, getting flights from Europe to the United States is a challenge.
So, considering travel restriction and quarantine requirements, it’s probably safe to assume that the entire roster could be available for informal limited training by mid-June.
The next question is when Phase 3 will begin. In that phase, the assumption is that teams will begin formal training including scrimmages. If that begins in late June, teams would need a minimum of seven to 10 days before they would be ready to play games.
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After that, teams would have to travel to the neutral hockey hub where they will be playing their games.
So, if all goes well (and that is a big if), hockey could resume sometime in early July. Last season, the playoffs started on April 10 and the Blues won the Cup on June 12. That’s nine weeks. You have to add the best-of-five series that will precede the standard playoffs and that could add 10 days to the schedule.
The league would endeavor to compress the schedule as much as possible with games played on back-to-back nights. Considering that the games would be played at neutral locations with no need to travel, they would be able to do that.
But consider this, by mid-August the league might be able to play games in front of fans in home arenas. At that point, they would have to abandon the neutral hub structure and restore the Playoffs to hometown arenas and that would mean a need for travel days.
No matter what, if the postseason begins in early July, it means the Stanley Cup Playoffs won’t end until the first week of September or later.