Things are pretty bleak and, frankly, quite scary in the world right now and we don’t even have the Vegas Golden Knights to cheer us up or offer us a much-needed distraction.
As we all know, the world continues to grapple with the coronavirus pandemic and it is a worldwide health crisis that has impacted literally everything, including the Vegas Golden Knights and the rest of the sports world.
As such, the NHL and the rest of the sporting world is currently on hiatus and I’ve been left with a strange feeling this morning given that today was meant to be Opening Day in MLB.
However, reliving some classic and historic moments from Baseball’s glittering past will have to do for now, while I am still in the process of digesting any bit of hockey content I can get my hand on.
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And that brings me to this article.
I posted some thoughts earlier on why protecting the 2020-21 NHL season should take priority above salvaging this year, but I understand that the thought of a cancelled season and no Stanley Cup Champion is a sobering thought for all of us.
Therefore, I decided to take a look at the bevy of options the NHL are currently exploring when it comes to staging a return for hockey at some point this year.
I will also look at how each scenario would impact the Vegas Golden Knights specifically, while keeping in mind that this is a very fluid situation still and things can change on a day-to-day basis.
Let’s delve in.
Year Resumes As Normal
Let’s start here, despite the fact that this is incredibly unlikely to happen.
The dream scenario for the NHL would be for the regular season to resume and then be completed, before starting the postseason in its original format.
That would avoid any further disruption and upsetting teams at not being given the chance to make a late push for the postseason, while the playoffs would not need to be tampered with.
As for the Golden Knights, they would have 11 regular season games remaining to wrap up the Pacific Division and home-ice advantage in the postseason.
However, given the way the COVID-19 is still causing havoc coupled with the fact that we’re approaching April, it would take a minor miracle for this scenario to actually happen.
Nothing is impossible, of course, but I would be stunned if the NHL tried to resurrect the regular season, even if they attempted to reduce the amount of games left.
There just isn’t enough time when you look at everything that needs to happen after the season has finished including the Draft and Free Agency.
And, even if hockey does return this year, it is very likely that the playoffs could be played without fans in the building given that some states and cities are in worse condition than others.
Jump Straight Into Playoffs
This is the most feasible option right now and we’re going to delve into the different formats the postseason could take on in a minute, but the NHL is desperate to award a Stanley Cup Champion this year and rightly so.
There is so much at stake from a financial side and from the history books perspective, so the league will do what they can to ensure the playoffs go ahead.
Teams would have to host a mini Training Camp before jumping straight back in, in order to prevent injuries, while the NHL would have to decide on how certain teams get in without the completion of the regular season to fall back on.
Putting teams into the playoffs based on points percentage seems the most likely outcome, while there are different formats the league can adopt to try and make it work for as many teams as possible.
Let’s have a look at some of those options…
Same Format With A Twist – One option could be to keep it a 16-team field but reduce the amount of games.
For instance, you could make the opening couple of rounds a best of five-games scenario, and then increase it back to a best of seven for both the Conference Finals and the Stanley Cup Final.
Of course, this idea doesn’t come without complications, mainly that some teams would miss out on the postseason who didn’t deserve to miss out but these are strange times we live in and the NHL has to do what is best in order to ensure that the playoffs are as entertaining a product as possible.
24-Team Format – One of the ideas that has been floated about a lot is the thought of expanding the postseason field from 16 teams to 24 teams.
When you first say it out loud it seems rather far-fetched given that the majority of the NHL would be competing in the playoffs, but it does make some sense in the current climate.
You could have 12 teams in either bracket and eight more teams battling for the Stanley Cup would generate more interest, and it would also generate more money for the NHL be it more fans attending or bigger TV audiences if fans aren’t permitted inside arenas by that point.
There could be a play-in format to determine which teams get in outside of the original 16, while you could again shorten the opening rounds to three or five-game series before reverting back to the traditional seven-game series for the Conference Finals and for the Stanley Cup Final itself.
Of course, there are faults with this particular format and it would take away from the integrity of the Cup, but these are desperate times and desperate measures may need to be called for.
The Players’ Idea
Now, according to Frank Seravalli of TSN, a group of NHL players have begun working on their own proposal for the return of hockey.
In this proposal, regular-season games would resume in late July and the playoffs would then get underway in August, with the Stanley Cup Final being played into September.
First of all, that would mean that the 2020-21 season would be pushed back to November and, as I mentioned here, the main priority should be ensuring that next year doesn’t get disrupted.
This idea doesn’t do that.
The other flaw with this proposal is the fact that teams would have to guarantee arena availability, and that might not be so easy to achieve in the summer months.
Plus, for teams like the Golden Knights, the Arizona Coyotes and the Tampa Bay Lightning to name but a few, playing games deep in the heat of the summer wouldn’t be that feasible due to the ice, and that would have to be taken into account.
The one benefit to this proposal is the fact that the Golden Knights would have a few regular season games to find their feet again, before delving into the heat of postseason battle.
But, overall, this is probably the least feasible options out of them all and I personally can’t see this particular idea being adopted anytime soon.
What It Means For VGK
So, there you go, those are some proposals as to what hockey could look like if sports return this year and all ideas have both positives and benefits.
As far as the Vegas Golden Knights are concerned, they would benefit more than most in any of the scenarios mapped out above.
For starters, they would be able to get healthy with the likes of Mark Stone, Alex Tuch and Chandler Stephenson all having the chance to return to full health, while Cody Glass could even be good to go after knee surgery should hockey be played deep into the summer.
Also, the Golden Knights are in a perfect position whether the regular season returns or not this year.
If it does, it will allow them to wrap up the Pacific Division while getting a few games under their belt in order to blast off the rust before entering the playoffs.
But, if we jump straight into the postseason, then the Golden Knights will be a top seed and they will have home-ice advantage due to their current position in the standings.
Overall, the Golden Knights are sitting pretty whatever form the season or playoffs takes on despite the fact that all of the above proposals aren’t perfect in any way shape or form.
However, if any of the above allowed hockey to start back up this year, then I think the Vegas Golden Knights and the rest of the NHL would accept whatever was put in-front of them.
And so would we as fans.