from Justin Bourne of Sportsnet,

…There is a 60-game schedule in place…

If you’re going to have a shortened season, baseline season integrity starts at that number for me. Your mileage may vary on that feeling, but look at the last full season we had, 2018-19. It was almost exactly around the 60th game when the eventual Stanley Cup champion St. Louis Blues poked their head into the Western Conference playoff picture. Go back just two weeks prior and there were only two teams beneath them in the Western Conference standings.

If you run a 48-game season, random events carry outsized weight and we don’t get an accurate assessment of how good teams really are. And let’s remember, “random events” is what comes up if you highlight the word hockey on your computer and click “look up.” Injuries are overly punitive, and there’s too little chance to change track if your team starts on a bad one.

So, 60 games. Not perfect, but I think enough action to reasonably tease out the good teams from the un-good.

…division-only play…

Most of the reason the league bothers with making sure every team plays each other is simply so no fanbase gets denied seeing each star player at least once a season. If we aren’t worried about fans right now, that becomes a non-issue.

Combined with the express goal of minimizing mingling between different groups, this is a no-brainer.

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