NHL’s pandemic plan could flatten the curve on regular-season demand for good Globe_Sports
This translation has been automatically generated and has not been verified for accuracy.Three months ago: Closing the borders won’t help.Two months ago: Face masks don’t do much good.One month ago: The economy will bounce back fine.Sports are out there guessing, too. It’s not their natural strength and it shows. At the beginning of all this, things were going to be back to normal soon. Then they weren’t going to be back at all. Now they’re going to be back in some bowdlerized format.
What’s not being considered in this rush to restart is how pandemic hockey affects the NHL next season and beyond. Because once people get a look at this – and assuming it doesn’t collapse midway through – they aren’t going to want to go back. Once the NHL does the same, it won’t want to either, but in a different way.
This is the paradox of the regular season – it takes up most of the scheduling real estate and, in the end, doesn’t matter all that much. Since the NHL draws the majority of its revenue from the regular season, that is a conundrum. If your favourite drinking establishment sold only bathtub gin Monday through Friday and champagne on Saturdays, that’s probably when you’d choose to roll by.Story continues below advertisementHow is hockey in Toronto played without a 'C’ stitched onto someone’s chest? Leading hockey scientists say it should not be possibleThe pandemic is forcing the NHL to admit it isn’t.
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