from Nick Faris of TheScore,

As Bruce Bennett sees it, the NHL playoffs are unfolding inside two kinds of bubbles. One is the stronghold that has housed Point and Varlamov's squads during their time in Toronto and, from the conference finals onward, Edmonton. The second is the scene Bennett observes from his perch in the uppermost deck at Rogers Place, where a camera he positioned high above the visitors' net captured Point's jubilance - and the Islanders' corresponding angst - 200 or so feet across the rink.

Bennett, 65, is the prolific Getty Images photographer whose work appears atop and throughout this story, like it has in most every publication that's covered hockey over his 45 seasons in the game. He's used to shooting from ice level, risking the odd cracked rib or head wound from an errant puck - more so in the old days, before protective plexiglass was omnipresent - to record history in real time from point-blank range.

But few precedents have persisted in 2020. Bennett isn't staying in the league's secure zone, and strict coronavirus protocols govern movement inside the arena. That's why Getty's Edmonton operation is based at center ice far above the fray, as if Bennett is watching and chronicling table hockey matchups from an impassable remove.

"Instead of playing bubble hockey with rods, and twisting those rods, I'm playing (with) cameras, twisting and contorting myself shooting from a photo position that's not conducive to the kind of photography that I like to produce," Bennett said in a recent phone interview.

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