There was some promising news that broke late Monday night regarding the NHL’s return to play.
One of the most trusted hockey insiders was up late and delivered some promising news. Darren Dreger of TSN reported that a targeted start date for the NHL’s return to play is January 13th.
He also mentioned that nothing was finalized but insiders like Darren Dreger are very connected and I’m sure where there’s smoke, there’s fire. A start date of January 13th would be exciting news for Canucks fans as there was growing concern that the season could be pushed into February.
So what does this mean for the Vancouver Canucks you ask?
Well, it provides everyone with some dates to look forward to as training camp approaches.
The first thing we should look for is Nils Höglander coming to North America. His loan is set to expire after his SHL game on December 12th. There’s one twist in the situation, we don’t have a start date for training camp just yet. His best bet is likely to leave right after that and begin to get accustomed to the city of Vancouver while being in a 14 day quarantine.
I’d expect us to hear more on December 13th on what Hoglander’s arrival date to Vancouver is. We could hear news before then but I feel a final decision will be made no later than the 13th.
So let’s talk about training camp.
The thing that makes the most sense to me is to have training camp begin on Monday, January 4th. It’s the beginning of the week, it gives you five days for practice with two days of scrimmages and two off days before heading into action on the 13th of January.
I don’t think that we will see any exhibition games before the bubble. These teams will end up playing each other a ton of times over the next handful of months.
The NHL is going to have to move quickly now as players reporting to Canada will need to quarantine for 14 days. We saw Jacob Markstrom and some Swedish players landing in Calgary on Instagram this Monday and some Canucks players should begin to follow suit.
Pierre Lebrun of TSN then weighed in and brought the idea of a 56 game season.
From what he reported, it makes a lot of sense that the NHL needs to move on to things like protocols, bubble options and how teams will travel, to name a few.
In general, this is good news for not only Canucks fans, but hockey fans around the world. The players will then know when they need to travel to their teams’ facilities and how different provincial and state protocols will affect each player travelling in from a different country.
Monday, January 4th sounds like a great plan for training camp and that will give the Canucks enough time to get situated in Vancouver. Dreger has reported about a 10 day training camp so that could push the start date of camps to January 2nd.
It will be strenuous time for some players as the two week quarantine rule in British Columbia will force players to celebrate Christmas during a quarantine phase of return to play. That could be pretty lonely time for some folks who don’t bring their families with them.
There’s more than a handful of Canucks already in Vancouver and I wouldn’t be surprised if we start to see more Canucks players make their way into BC to begin their 14 day quarantine as soon as possible. Seeing more players return to Vancouver would be an asseverating tidbit of news for the NHL start up date.
We will continue to follow along with the latest news about the NHL’s plan to return to play and how it can affect the Vancouver Canucks.