[tsn] NHL to Consider Hybrid Bubbles for 2021 Season

[Phil]

Now that they?ve pulled it off ? with more than 33,000 negative tests conducted on players and team staff over the past eight weeks ? the question is: Will we ever see a bubble again?

 

NHL Players? Association executive director Donald Fehr told the Associated Press on Sunday that it won?t be for a full season.

 

?Nobody is going to do that for four months or six months or something like that,? Fehr said.

But what Fehr did admit is a possibility is the idea of a hybrid bubble to start next season.

In Fehr?s words: ?Protected environments that people would be tested, and they?ve 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 meeting is likely to be scheduled between the NHL and the NHLPA for some time next week to begin discussions. The NHLPA is in the process of finalizing a committee of players to participate in the discussion directly with the league, similar to the Return to Play committee that was created shortly after the pandemic put this season on pause in March.

 

One concept for a hybrid bubble that has been kicked around on a preliminary basis includes four to six ?bubbles? in various locales around the NHL, preferably in cities where fans would be allowed inside arenas.

 

Fans have already been permitted to attend NFL games in a limited capacity this season in Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Texas, Tennessee and Missouri. That list is expected to grow to include North Carolina, Arizona and Louisiana in upcoming weeks.

 

https://www.tsn.ca/nhl-to-consider-concept-of-hybrid-bubbles-for-2021-season-1.1531258

 

 

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[Bugg]

The NHL needed this "bubble" tournament get paid NBC network TV money.

 

But is that sustainable over a full season? At least this season they had already played all but a month of the schedule. Not sure how every team going from roughly 75% of it's gate, arena and local cable ad revenue to practically nothing except some ad local revenue works. The network TV money is a big component of revenue, but suspect the clubs and players are going to want to open things up.

[Pete]

The NHL needed this "bubble" tournament get paid NBC network TV money.

 

But is that sustainable over a full season? At least this season they had already played all but a month of the schedule. Not sure how every team going from roughly 75% of it's gate, arena and local cable ad revenue to practically nothing except some ad local revenue works. The network TV money is a big component of revenue, but suspect the clubs and players are going to want to open things up.

Yea, something like this.

 

There are going to be some teams who can't even afford to pay players if there's no gate.... Yotes and Sens come to mind.

[Dunny]

Totally, the whole league could burn to the ground, yet. If the border isn't open, there's no way the Gov here will allow travel for sporting events to the extent they'll require.

Thays why the Jays are in Buffalo. It was bubble, or nothing.

 

We're going to hit major Covid numbers here really soon, it's gonna happen, and when it does the thought of having fans in the stands, here? It's unfathomable.

 

I think you're right about Gate Revenue, and lacking that, but needing a bubble format to carry on, in this country, puts this league in a helluva spot.

 

Also, AHL? Done. ECHL? Done. Major Junior? Toast. Any form of junior? Nope.

 

There's going to be a reckoning across all sports, except NFL football, of course.

[Lord Al]

With the NFL playing in there home city ,the NHL should start the season The same way

 

 

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[Sod16]

With the Cup tournament, they didn't have to pay the players anything and the TV revenues were better than for regular season games. I don't know how the economics would work for a regular season quasi-bubble, when you have to pay the players and get less per game in TV revenue. This league, more than baseball or football, is in a real pickle.

[Worle Ranger]

I don?t see how this is sustainable. I think they?ll have to either shorter the season or can they ask the players to play for 50% of their salary and kick the remaining 50% down to the final year of the contract (obvs this wouldn?t apply to players in the final year of their deal).

 

Obviously it?s nowhere near as simplistic as that but salaries are going to be one of, if not the biggest, outgoing for owners.

 

 

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[Lord Al]

Are you saying the players should take a 50% pay cut on top of there salary being already prorated if the season is shortened?

 

 

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[Morphinity 2.0]

I don't think they'll need to do bubbles, but they should do all of the games in batches a la the Toews plan.

 

https://theathletic.com/1331125/2019/10/29/introducing-the-toews-schedule-a-dramatically-reimagined-and-more-player-friendly-nhl-season/

 

His idea is simple. Instead of playing one-offs, why not play series like in baseball? Go to Winnipeg once a year, set up shop for four or five days, and knock out all your road games in one shot. The road trips become longer, but the travel becomes easier.

 

...

 

“I don’t think most clubs would embrace that,” NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told me in Prague.

 

Some of the reasons are obvious, while some are more subtle.

 

• Arena availability: In compiling the Toews Schedule, we didn’t take into account NBA games, concerts, political rallies, monster truck shows or pro wrestling events. I’m pretty sure the Bulls would have something to say about the Blackhawks having three homestands of seven or eight games.

 

• Marketing: Daly said the league has kicked around some of the ideas behind the Toews Schedule over the years, but that the teams prefer variety. They’d rather see Patrick Kane, Connor McDavid and Sidney Crosby come through their town two or three times over the course of a season, rather than for one big weekend.

 

“I think in some markets, they want the variation of club to club to club, as opposed to having to sell the same club multiple nights in a row,” Daly said.

And in order to make the Toews Schedule work to its fullest, we went back to the pre-lockout style of scheduling, in which you only play teams from the other conference once all season. That means not everybody gets to see Kane, McDavid and Crosby in their building each season, another potential deal-breaker.

 

• Television: If Toews feels the Blackhawks’ schedule is screwier than most, he’s not imagining it. NBC Sports has a big hand in the schedule, and even though the Blackhawks haven’t won a playoff series in four years, they’re still one of the league’s biggest draws. That means NBC wants them on Wednesday nights against other big draws, which often means shoe-horning those games into already busy weeks. As Daly put it, “We have scheduling obligations vis-a-vis our rights-holders, and that probably makes Chicago’s schedule a little worse than others.”

 

So essentially a baseball-like schedule where a team would go into a city for a 3 game series once a year, rather than bounce around.

[Keirik]

Don't they kind of do that, now, like west coast trips, northern trips, etc? Unless you are talking and home and away back to backs

[Morphinity 2.0]

Don't they kind of do that, now, like west coast trips, northern trips, etc? Unless you are talking and home and away back to backs

 

Sort of - they try to do a California trip and a Western Canada trip, but sometimes they can't fit them all in one trip. If I recall correctly the Rangers had two trips to Western Canada last year.

[Bugg]

No matter what, NBC is locked into starting the Olympics from Tokyo on or about July 23rd, assuming that goes forward, so there's a hard deadline for this next season-

 

https://www.hockeyfeed.com/nhl-news/nhl-faces-deadline-to-end-2020-21-season-if-it-takes-place?fbclid=IwAR2uNvmGj1LAgYVL8lILuiw7ROlQ_Zv9d5iFU9YZobkcZkryixU0Iak4Aao