from Damien Cox at the Toronto Star,
Max Domi has it right. For all hockey players, executives and fans.
Let’s just wait and see.
Domi, who has Type 1 diabetes, is going to pause for a week or so before deciding whether he wants to be part of the NHL’s ambitious restart effort. This is smart. It may not be the back-to-business message the NHL wants to see going out to the hockey public at a time when 24 of the league’s 31 teams are revving up operations south of the border, where there is no national plan to combat the coronavirus epidemic....
There has been a little too much celebration, and self-congratulation, for the plan that the NHL and its players association have cooked up. Nothing wrong with trying, mind you. But when you have a business plan in the middle of a deadly pandemic that is driven by pressing financial imperatives rather than medical priorities, you’re going to have a business plan with holes.
If money didn’t matter, and television contracts didn’t matter, there would be no reason to even attempt to complete the 2019-20 playoffs. But those things do matter, particularly the TV commitments.
Moreover — and this probably hasn’t been discussed enough — the NHL as a business is under severe duress. Consider that a year from now NHL teams will still likely not be able to fill their arenas with customers, and you start to understand that a flat salary cap may turn out to be the least of the money concerns for some teams.
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