NHL eyeing a return

The league will be the first major sport to return since the lockdown

As the COVID-19 virus attacks the world it is taking away many of the things that’s we love. There’s no concerts, restaurants, bars, social gatherings. The thing that seems to hurt people greatly is the fact that they can’t see their favorite team play because sports is also cancelled. The NFL draft consisted of multiple facetime calls, the MLB has been in talks about coming back sometime during the summer but there is no telling if that is even possible. So many seasons never even finished. College basketball, the NBA, and the NHL. Most recently the National Hockey League announced that they are hopefully eyeing somewhat of a comeback in mid-May. This is not a definite and the commissioner of the league Gary Bettman said “we are not going to rush anything”. The league would like to finish the season, and would like to continue play and reward players for what they worked so hard for but that doesn’t mean everything is going to continue like normal. Just because they have the intent to come back by May that doesn’t mean all teams are on board. The league has only been notified that 1 team has said to expect to come back by mid-May. The issue that the league is having at the moment is that the CDC and government still has rules that can keep the league from starting. The NHL has a plan that will centralize the games to four different locations but that might cause issues with getting the team to where they need to be. The other big question is social distancing guidelines and how that varies per state and will effect some teams depending on where they are relocated to. The testing of the virus comes to play too, they will have to test and retest to ensure that the spreading of the virus doesn’t happen. From a government standpoint this may be a reason to keep them from starting because of the limited amount of tests that are being handed out. Like the MLB the NHL has is incredibly diverse which causes for guideline issues. There are players from all over the world mostly in Europe and Canada, so how is going to work by bring those players back into the country to the neutral sites to get going again. These are all things that the league is still aggressively figuring out. The league is making its best attempt to come back but with all the rules in place right now it is very unclear when that will be. Personally I think it is important to finish up the season and get the players what they deserve But in all reality I don’t know how possible that will be. Only time will tell.