NHL planning for bubble-less season

The National Hockey League and its players' association will meet within the next two weeks to discuss possible scenarios for the 2020-21 season, with both sides hoping to avoid playing it in quarantined bubbles.

"Certainly not for a season, of course not," NHLPA executive director Don Fehr told Canadian Press after the Tampa Bay Lightning defeated the Dallas Stars in a six-game final to win the Stanley Cup last week in Edmonton, Alberta.

"Nobody is going to do that for four months or six months or something like that. Whether we could create some protected environments in which people would be tested and they'd be clean when they came in and lasted for some substantially shorter period of time with people cycling in and out is one of the things I suspect we will examine."

A week after commissioner Gary Bettman said a mid-to-late December or early-January start to next season was possible, Fehr said Dec 1 was the "earliest conceivable date", adding: "Nobody is going to rush it."

Unlike Major League Baseball and the NBA, the NHL is dependent on live attendance for over 50 percent of its revenues, so having fans in all 31 rinks is a priority.

"On whatever basis we may or may not be able to have fans in our buildings is something that might well be beyond our control in terms of local government regulations that will determine how much the shortfall is off what we are projecting," Bettman said.

Ahead of the pandemic-delayed return to play in August, the league and players' association negotiated a long-term extension of their collective bargaining agreement that acknowledges if each team can't play 82 regular-season games with fans, player salaries could take a huge hit.

"The players are adults; they understand," Fehr said. "They may not like it. They may grumble, and they may wish it was different. I'm sure owners do. I'm sure fans do. I'm sure everybody does. Nobody likes what we're living through. But you don't gain anything by sugarcoating or being less blunt than otherwise would be the case."

One scenario the NHL is reportedly considering would cut the regular season to 60 games and wrap up the Stanley Cup playoffs before the start of the 2021 Summer Olympics in Tokyo in order to fulfill its commitment to NBC, which is the league's US TV rights holder and also the broadcaster for the Games.

"In this world we live in, I think anything is possible," said Fehr. "What we have to do is basically proceed on the assumption that there will be a season, and that we can figure out how to do it in a way that provides the requisite health and safety for players and staff and media and fans once we can get them back in the arenas－but at the same time with some integrity. That'll be the task."