NHL exploring ways to resume

I hope you all are doing well and staying safe out there as we’re over a month into the official quarantine.

It’s been fun watching the Sabres Classics that they’ve been airing on MSG each weeknight, but there was some talk on Wednesday that the NHL may be looking to have games played in July, with an actual plan starting to take place.

Andy’s tweet says “restarting,” but surely the season wouldn’t actually restart, but rather resume. It’d be a little surprising for the league to want to resume the regular season as well as playoffs, but there are a number of teams in the standings still fighting for a playoff spot.

I had imagined the Sabres season to be over, but after reading how strongly the NHL feels about completing the regular season, maybe we will get 13 more Sabres games after all. It’s too bad Buffalo is 13 points out of a playoff spot, but the bigger thing is that we’d have some kind of hockey back, even though it may not entirely be the same.

Not only does the NHL want to complete the regular season and then have playoffs, but before all of that, they want time for the players to get some work in.

“There needs to be at least three weeks of training camp. When the players come back, they want to be in, and we want them to be in, game-ready shape.” – NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman to Sportsnet

That’s a long span of time stretching from training camp until the Stanley Cup Final. It’s possible that playoff series may be shorter than a best-of-seven, but that’s a long time in the summer to be playing. The NHL has also made it clear that they do not want to push back the start of next season, either.

The NHL’s current plan is to have four NHL rinks around the country, one dedicated to each division, but they have to get approval and everything in order to make it feasible. The stands would likely be empty or have a limited amount of fans.

It appears Florida may be the Atlantic Division’s neutral site if everything ends up working out.

We’ll see what happens with this, but right now, the NHL is trying to have games played in the next few months. Hopefully they can work something out and we’ll keep updating the site as we learn more.



Kevin Freiheit
Kevin Freiheit
I founded Buffalo Hockey Central in 2008 and have poured hours and hours into this site. Luckily, we have a great team of writers and designers who have helped keep this up and running despite a ton of out-of-pocket costs. We do this because we enjoy it, and we're desperate to see the Sabres win the Cup someday, but they have to make the playoffs first.
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