On Monday afternoon the NHL officially announced that the league and the NHL Players' Association had come to terms on all the details fo the Return to Play protocols and the Memorandum of Understanding that will add another four years to the current Collective Bargaining Agreement.
The first step in ratification by the players is complete. On Tuesday night, the deal received approval by the NHLPA Executive Board (one vote per team).
The NHLPA's Executive Board has approved the tentative CBA and referred it to the NHLPA Membership for a ratification vote. pic.twitter.com/nqDpMpZYbd
Now, the full NHLPA membership will vote anonymously over the next few days. Voting is being conducted electronically. Results will be announced on Friday. The deal will be approved with a simple majority (50 percent plus 1).
The NHL Board of Governors must also give their approval by two-thirds majority. Their meeting is also scheduled for Friday.
At this point, it appears to be full steam ahead. Mandatory training camps are scheduled to officially open next Monday; teams are scheduled to travel to the hub cities of Edmonton (Western Conference) and Toronto (Eastern Conference) on July 26, and the Qualifying Round is scheduled to begin on Saturday, August 1 — smack in the midst of a holiday weekend.
In each location, there will be four qualifying-round best-of-fives and the top teams' three-game round-robin tournaments. The goal is to have that qualifying round complete by about August 10, so the plan is to play a lot of hockey in a very short period of time.
I’m told the most likely plan for the NHL is to have three games a day in each of the hub cities: 12 pm, 4pm & 8pm.
Given the two hour difference between Toronto & Edmonton, should be a viewer’s dream.
For us in B.C., that means the first Eastern game will kick off at 10 a.m. and the last Western game probably won't end till about 11 p.m. PT. This schedule should limit overlapping games, so we should be able to see almost continuous action by flipping back and forth.
As for the atmosphere in the building, I think it's hard for all of us to wrap our brain around what kind of environment the empty arenas will bring.
"I haven't thought about it too much but yeah, it's gonna be very different for sure," Chris Tanev told me on Tuesday during his Zoom call with media. "I think the momentum swings will be be quite different, especially when you don't have fans cheering for you — or when you're in the road city when the rink gets going and the other team can maybe get five or seven minutes of a big momentum swing. It's going to be different to see how that plays out, for sure."
As one of the grizzled veterans on the current Canucks team, I asked Tanev to remember back to his NHL playoff debut, when he stepped in as a rookie to play the last two games of the Western Conference Final against the San Jose Sharks, then the last three games of the Stanley Cup Final.
"I was pretty nervous I think, jumping into the middle of the playoffs," he said. "Obviously, we were a very good team and then playing some very high-end other teams against guys that you sort of grew up idolizing your whole life.
"It's definitely a little bit nerve-wracking, but once you get the blood flowing and the juices going, I think it's fun.
"I think that's the best way to describe it. Every shift matters, every little play matters and I think that's why playoff hockey and then the Stanley Cup is so hard to win."
Tanev also talked about how, despite their lack of playoff experience, the Canucks' young guns aren't going to need much advice about what to expect when the games get going, how much he enjoys playing with Quinn Hughes, and how he's glad that he and his fiancee decided to ride out the pandemic in Vancouver rather than trying to return to their offseason homebase in Toronto.
Right now, that means Tanev has the luxury of a little more freedom when he's not at the rink, skating in the non-quarantine group that now also includes Troy Stecher, Alex Edler and new additions Tyler Myers and Jake Virtanen, who drove into town from Kelowna, Jay Beagle and Brandon Sutter who drove from Alberta, and Micheal Ferland, who drove all the way from Manitoba. Days at the rink start at 6:45 a.m. for that crew, in order to leave time for cleaning between sessions and make sure everyone gets their turn.
As for the 14-day quarantine crew that came in from the U.S. and Sweden, they should be moving into the home stretch at this point, and will be able to move out of the hotel and back to their homes in the next few days. But Jake Virtanen's nightclub adventures last week served as a good reminder to everybody that players will need to be cautious about their outings after quarantine is done, even in a relatively safe city like Vancouver.
If you're interested in reading the full documents that cover the return-to-play protocols for Phase 3 and Phase 4, you can find the links to those documents here.
From a media perspective — it sounds like some media members will be permitted to watch games from inside the rinks, but from a good distance away. They'll be expected to leave as soon as the game is over and won't have any direct contact with players or anybody else from the team.
All media availabilities will be conducted by Zoom, so media members in hub cities or elsewhere will all get access to the same content.
It's not yet clear whether local media members will be permitted inside Rogers Arena during training camp.
Also still not clear — where Canucks prospect Jack Rathbone will play next season.
Rathbone was a guest on TSN1040 on Tuesday — I didn't listen to the interview but from what I gather, he continues to keep all his options on the table.
With Covid numbers still on the rise in the U.S., the NCAA is expected to make an announcement on Wednesday about the fate of its fall sports schedule, which would include Rathbone's Harvard hockey team. There is some talk that hockey might scrap the fall schedule but look at playing a shorter schedule in 2021, leading up to its annual tournament, so there may still be an opportunity to play.
The state of the AHL also remains completely up in the air — whether there will be a season and, if there is, if it would be scheduled to align with the late-starting 2020-21 NHL campaign.
Meanwhile, European leagues including the KHL still seem to be gunning for their usual fall start dates, which leaves a host of question marks for prospects like Rathbone who are trying to figure out the optimal time to turn pro.
Vancouver Canucks Blogger • 
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