NHL vetting up to 12 cities for a potential season restart under centralized format

The NHL is looking into a centralized four-city format for the hopeful resumption of the 2019-20 season, and the league is already vetting a handful of cities.

Neutral sites are no longer the play for the NHL in their quest to hopefully resume the 2019-20 season sometime later this year. Instead, the league has switched tracks to a centralized four-city format, which would see each of the NHL’s four divisions have a host city where games would be played.

On Friday, TSN insider Pierre LeBrun reported in The Athletic that the NHL has started the vetting process for 12 cities across the league, with the hopes of eventually narrowing it down to four if this is the route the league takes. According to LeBrun, some of those cities include: Minnesota, Edmonton, Toronto, Pittsburgh, Columbus and Dallas.

Previously debated cities such as Buffalo and Raleigh are reportedly not on the list, due to New York’s high coronavirus case rate and the fact that the Carolina Hurricanes’ new practice facility has not yet been built.

As expected for a circumstance this unorthodox, the league is looking at all the facilities these cities possess and can provide. From having the requisite amount of sheets of ice for the teams, to hotel space for the players and staff, in-arena kitchen size to feed these players and the ability to have access to rigorous testing.

Why is the NHL moving away from neutral sites?

On Friday, NHL senior executive vice president and director of hockey operations Colin Campbell spoke on Sportsnet’s Hockey Central about what cities and sites they are considering, and why an NHL rink is so important.

“There’s a number of criteria. Is it a friendly hub? What state is friendly? What province is friendly? What are they dealing with (in terms of COVID-19 cases)? Obviously, you look at the New York area, it’s not very friendly and you look at Alberta, that seems fairly friendly.

“There was some talk about North Dakota and other sites. We need an NHL arena that’s game-ready that’s all set up and ready to go for broadcasting, for NHL games. They need four dressing rooms inside those arenas to play the number of games they need to play each day. The hotels need to be adequate and what our players need.”

The amount of planning and preparation needed to get each of these sites up and running in the safest ways possible will be the biggest hurdle the NHL will encounter with this plan. Each of the four sites chosen would have to be air-tight in terms of player and personnel safety, and if one person tests positive the whole thing would no doubt come down.

Of course, that is all assuming sports are allowed to return later this year. And that the NHL doesn’t change its mind again with another idea or solution the league finds to better in the long run.

Plus, the league is adamant in their quest to play out the rest of the regular season before truncating the Stanley Cup playoffs in some form, meaning all 31 teams will be in action if the league can have it.

Given how often things have changed over the last few weeks in regards to the NHL’s possible return, it’s wise to take these reports with a grain of salt as the days progress. It is, however, great to see the league think of ideas and prepare for any possible avenue to return to play later this year if sports are indeed allowed to return.

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