from Michael Traikos of the National Post,

We still don’t know how the league plans to do this, not with California state officials forcing the San Francisco 49ers to play their home games in Arizona and with Winnipeg and Montreal stuck in the red zone. Not with numbers expected to get even worse after the holidays.

A vaccine — or vaccines — may be on its way, but it won’t be here by Christmas. And Auston Matthews and Connor McDavid are not getting it before your grandma does.

So, the NHL is getting creative. There’s talk of shortening the season and expanding the rosters and limiting travel. There’s talk of hub cities and holding outdoor games.

The plan seems built on one principle: get through this season as safely and cheaply as possibly....

Maybe chopping the season down from 82 to 56 games will not only save money but also make every one of those games more competitive. Maybe combining all the Canadian clubs into a seven-team division will not only decrease exposure to the virus but also increase ratings across the country.

Maybe the bragging rights that come with winning the CanCon Cup or whatever the winner of the all-Canadian division is called will be more noteworthy than claiming the actual Stanley Cup. Based on how many of you actually watched the Tampa Bay Lightning win the Stanley Cup this year, that’s not really saying much.

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