from Chris Johnston of Sportsnet,

The most powerful men in the NHL made no attempt to sugarcoat the current situation during Monday’s hour-long Zoom session and really what good would that have accomplished anyway?

The league isn’t approaching these coming months any differently than you and I are individually. All it is trying to do is get through the pandemic as safely as possible while keeping the lights on for better days ahead.

“Let me make something really clear,” said Bettman. “We’re coming back to play this season because we think it’s important for the game, because our fans and our players want us to, and it may give people -- particularly those who are back in isolation or where there are curfews -- a sense of normalcy and something to do.”

The rules

They aren’t carved in stone. They’re not even written out in pen.

Given the uncertainty, there’s a general understanding that the league will have to be agile and open-minded.

So there’s isn’t a precise threshold for how many players below the typical 20-man roster a team would have to be missing in order to force the postponement of a game. Taxi squads of four to six players are being instituted to combat this issue, but it’s not likely to be eliminated completely during a compressed campaign played amid a pandemic.

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