from Frank Seravalli of TSN,

The next few weeks will feature hockey’s version of Planes, Trains and Automobiles.

That’s because more than half of the NHL’s players remain stationed outside of their team’s home city, commissioner Gary Bettman revealed on Monday night.

“Actually, 56 per cent of our players, roughly, aren’t in the places where their teams play and there’ll be training camp,” Bettman said in an interview with ESPN’s Mike Greenberg on Monday night. “So we’ve got a lot of people to move around and we have to get people back from outside of North America.”

Bettman and the NHL said previously that upwards of 17 per cent of players are currently overseas in Europe.

Facing a possible 14-day quarantine when they return, that would mean that NHL players would have to return to their team’s city by June 25 in order to be ready to participate in the opening of training camps on July 10 as scheduled. Numerous NHL teams have not opened their practice facilities over the last week for small individual group training sessions because they do not have enough players in town.

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