The future of the Rangers’ season will be determined starting Monday

The NHL has scheduled the beginning of training camps for Monday, July 13.  It’s a key date for the New York Rangers and every other NHL team.

The NHL has laid out an ambitious schedule for their return to play. The first big step is on Monday when training camps open for the 24 teams that will resume play. On July 25 or 26, all 24 teams including the New York Rangers will travel to the two hub cities, Edmonton and Toronto.

Once teams have arrived at their respective hub city, they will enter a “bubble” that will separate them from outsiders in an effort to minimize the threat of COVID-19.   They will have five or six days of preparation time in the bubble before they take part in the best-of-five qualifying round, scheduled to start on August 1.

The period before teams escape to their bubbles will be crucial to the future of the NHL season and will be the time when there is the highest health risk.  The future of the Rangers’ season as well as that of the NHL will be determined over the next two weeks.

Training camp risks

The key goal for all teams is to make it through the training camp period.  That’s when there is the greatest risk of infection as players will be living at home and interacting with people who could have the virus.   There will be stringent testing protocols throughout training camp, but the risk of widespread infection is a real one.

Major League Baseball (MLB) released results of their first round of testing as their training camps started and they reported only 38 positive results out of 3,185 samples collected.   19 teams had positive results and 31 players were positive with seven team personnel also infected.

However, about a half dozen teams had to cancel their workouts when test results were not available or there were issues with the actual testing.   As for local teams, the Yankees reported that DJ LeMahieu and Luis Cessa tested positive and the Mets said that one unnamed player has tested positive since March.

Due to privacy issues it’s impossible to know exactly which MLB players have been affected and that goes for the NHL as well.  On Monday the NHL announced that 23 of the 396 players who had been working out voluntarily had tested positive with over 2,900 COVID-19 tests administered.  An additional 12 players who have not used their teams’ facilities have also tested positive. The league will not identify the players or teams affected.

The league has a protocol that will have to be followed throughout the training camp phase.  If any player has symptoms or has contact with someone with symptoms, they have to let the team know immediately, self quarantine and get tested.  He won’t be able to return to practice until he has tested negative twice after symptoms have disappeared.  Any player with symptoms who tests positive cannot take part in any workouts for a minimum of 14 days.

If a player is asymptomatic he still has to be tested at least twice before he will be cleared to return to practice.  Contact tracing will be important and if a player tests positive, anyone who was within six feet of him has to be tested as well.

That’s where the risks are when it comes to training camp.  Players will be living at home with their families and unlike the bubble, there is no way to guarantee that they will not be in contact with any one with the virus.  A worst case is that a player is infected at home and becomes a “super spreader” at the training facility.

The good news is that the spread of the pandemic has slowed considerably in the New York area, unlike other parts of the country.  The hope has to be that players are maintaining their own personal “bubbles” while at training camp to minimize infection.

No matter what, the challenge facing the Rangers and every other team is to make it through the “preseason” in good health and get to the hub city with the roster intact.

A tight schedule

The NHL wants to conduct the second phase of the Entry Draft Lottery on August 10 meaning that the best-of-five qualifying round has to be concluded in nine days.  The league will schedule three games per hub site per day, including the play-in round and the round robin games between the top four teams in each Conference.

With the Rangers due to play in the hub city of Toronto there is some clarification on when we can expect to see them play.  Bob McKenzie of TSN reported that games will be scheduled at 12pm, 4pm and 8pm each day with the 4pm time slot reserved for the round robin teams.

The top four teams in each conference will play each other once to determine Stanley Cup Playoff seeding and they will play with regular season overtime rules.  That means each round robin team will play three times for a total of six games.

If the timing of the first series of games is nine days, that means the Rangers could be playing at noon, 4pm or 8pm, depending on the date.  The qualifying round will be played with playoff overtime rules.

Western Conference teams will play with the same rules and start times, so fans in the eastern time zone can see those games at 3pm, 7pm and 11pm.