from Justin Bourne of Sportsnet,

What’s next for the NHL?

I’m not asking that in some existential manner; I genuinely think people want an answer to that more literally. To be clear, I don’t have hard answers, as literally nobody does. The league is wisely waiting to put any decisions in stone — much as they were wise to wait on naming host cities for the 2019–20 NHL playoffs — which means all anyone can do is sit back and evaluate how the pandemic evolves over the winter months, which will affect the league’s available options.

But I do have some guesses about this and a small handful of other topics related to the off-season, and what's to come in 2020–21 and beyond. Here we go:

1. What will the NHL look like in the months to come?

What I think is most likely is that the NHL will play a shortened 2020–21 season that begins sometime in January (maybe 55-60 games?). It will likely start in a variety of hub cities — potentially two in Canada and a handful in the U.S. that are deemed the safest and most amenable to having some fans at the games. And there will almost certainly be a Canadian Division given border issues.

The goal will be to get through the early part of the season as the second wave hopefully subsides, so the league could add more fans for the second part of the season. I say “more fans,” because I think there will be an attempt to include at least some right off the bat, with numbers hopefully increasing as the months go on. I believe the league will do everything they can to play as many games as possible with as many paying humans present as is safely (or at least legally) allowable.

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