from Bruce Garrioch of the Ottawa Sun,

While the NHL deputy commissioner is “optimistic” the league will be able to come back in some format during the summer, that he and commissioner Gary Bettman have a lot of options on the table after Florida Panthers’ president Matt Caldwell told reporters Wednesday morning the league will be back in July.

Not so fast, noted Daly, who added he had missed a call from Caldwell.

“I’m not sure the approach has really changed since the beginning of this,” Daly told this newspaper from his New York office Wednesday afternoon. “We have to be prepared for every eventuality. We need to do our due-diligence so that the time it takes for us to respond to the circumstances is basically that the work is done and the only thing that needs to be implemented is the decision.

“That’s kind of where we are. We’re doing all our due-diligence, we’re trying to read the tea leaves as well as anybody else can read the tea leaves in terms of what circumstances may present themselves. The social gathering restrictions seem like they’re going to have a long light than maybe originally hoped or anticipated so we’re deal with that possibility or probability that’s maybe not a certainty. We have to flexible, nimble and ready to respond as events continue to unfold.”

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