Not to make light of the work involved in banging out a new collective bargaining agreement, but the far heavier lift now for the NHL begins Monday, when 700-plus players report to 24 training camps across the US and Canada for what could be a perilous 83-day tightrope walk to win the Stanley Cup.
All of this, lest anyone forgets, will be staged under the dark cloud of COVID-19. The pandemic that shut down the league on March 12 is still here, and by the way, punching with Probert-like force in a few of the states where camps are about to be called to order.
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To wit: Florida (see: Sunrise, Panthers and Tampa, Lightning); North Carolina (see Raleigh, Hurricanes); Texas (see: Dallas, Stars); Nevada (see: Las Vegas, Golden Knights).
All well and dandy that the NHL on Friday night buttoned down labor peace through at least the spring of 2026 with the ratification of a new CBA. No small task. Especially for a league that once lost the entire 2004-05 season because it couldn’t sit around the bargaining table and carve up a multimillion-dollar golden goose.
The trickier part now, with labor peace achieved, will be to assure that the labor doesn’t get chopped into pieces by the pandemic or the onerous postseason workload.
Here in the Hub of Hockey we’re in a much better place. Bruce Cassidy and his Bruins will meet in Brighton Monday morning (roster yet to be released) in a climate far less fraught with anxiety than when COVID-19 cases spiked here in April and May. Thankfully, the same is true for the Rangers and Islanders in New York and the Flyers in Philadelphia.
Boston is by no means clear of the threat. No city is. But the hysteria has eased as we slowly knit back together the socioeconomic pieces with the curve flattened. That said, the 30 or so Bruins players who open camp will be operating in somewhat of a bubble at Warrior Arena these next two weeks, as mandated by the detailed return to play agreement the league and players also ratified on Friday.
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Bruins players, among other things, will be cordoned off from the media, and only participate in a very limited number of virtual interviews each day. All media members, scattered around the arena, will wear masks, lowering the risk of spreading germs or uttering clichés.
Other than when on the ice, players will be asked to social distance while at the workplace. Then it’s up to them as Average Joes of the Commonwealth to go home, or return to their nearby hotel rooms, and live the near-monk-like existence we’ve been implored to adopt these last four months.
Come July 26, all 700-plus players (minus the 60 or so Oilers and Maple Leafs) will leave their camps and head to one of two hub cities, Edmonton or Toronto. There will be COVID-19 risks there, of course, although the infection rate in both of those Canadian cities has been low.
The greater risk, for the moment, appears to be the hometown risk, the chance that players pick up the virus in the “soft” bubble world of camps (18 in the US, six in Canada).
“Is there a 0 percent chance that someone brings [the virus] in from outside?” said ex-defenseman Mathieu Schneider, one of the players’ key negotiators, sizing up the risk factors inherent in the individual camps, speaking during a Zoom call with the media on Saturday. “No, of course not.”
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There now will be, by Schneider’s eye, a “huge onus” on the players’ side to be extremely careful while working out of their home bases.
“Going to the rink, going home, going to the grocery store, social distancing, wearing masks,” he noted. “All the things that all of us are practicing every single day now. There’s a very good chance that the guys are going to be safer when they’re in the bubble [in Edmonton or Toronto] than when they’re in normal circumstances at home.”
All 24 teams will have a chance to play at least one exhibition game before play turns real on Aug. 1. The Bruins will play three round-robin games (Aug. 2, 5, 8) that will determine their seeding for the start of the 16-team tournament on Aug. 11.
The 16-team Cup tourney, which will include the standard four rounds, all of them best-of-seven affairs, is guaranteed to be over no later than Oct. 4. It’s possible, if a team were stretched to Game 7 in all four rounds, all 28 games would be played in as few as 53 days.
The COVID-19 threat is frightening enough. The scheduling demand is a horror unto itself.
It’s game on, folks, but with the COVID-19 caveat firmly attached.
Kevin Paul Dupont can be reached at kevin.dupont@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @GlobeKPD.
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Agreement reached, a more difficult task now begins for NHL - The Boston Globe
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