With the NHL, like most things, is on hold. The question though, is when should we expect things to get going? Darren Dreger at TSN reported that the Players are pushing for an August-September finish to the season. To get to that finish date we would be looking at a June-July start to the playoffs if we played out the playoffs as we normally would (4 rounds of best of 7). This aligns fairly well with the CDC’s (Centre for Disease Control) recommendation right now of everything being shut down for 8 weeks. We are yet to hear from the NHL, but there is reason to believe that this is the start of a plausible timeline. So where does everything else fall into that? Below is my estimated timeline based on that piece of information.
June 1 - NHL will have to do one of the following
- Normalize teams points down to 68, the minimum number of games played by teams in the playoff race)
- or 71 games, representing the maximum number of games played by teams in the playoff race
June 15 - NHL starts mini training camps for teams that are currently in playoff spots
July 1 - Playoffs start
September 15th at the latest - the Stanley Cup is awarded
October 1 - NHL Draft
October 8 - Free Agency Opens
November 15th - Training Camps open
January 1 - A shortened 2021 season starts
What does this mean for you? First thing hold tight! We have some time before hockey is going to be back. If you need your hockey fix, we are going to keep providing you content. Playoff pools will get going around the start of July, and you can expect to be drafting your 2021 fantasy teams in December.