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Auston Matthews and some of the Tampa Bay Lightning tested positive Probably just shut'er down. This Stanley Cup would already have an asterisk attached to it, imagine if we're in Game 3 of the Cup Finals and then one or two players on the other team test positive. Shut the league down for two weeks? Keep playing and award a Championship because of avoidable bad luck?

I've seen a few players grumble on social media that the excuse for not having the NHL in the olympics was so that they don't get injured in non-NHL games but then they keep trying to hold the season during a pandemic. At the time I thought it was pandemic grumbling but now I'm wondering if that was olympics grumbling instead

I bet it has something to do with ad rates. They may lose money running the playoffs, but they'll probably lose less overall than if they didn't run them because they can make back some advertiser money that would otherwise probably be pulled. Also with players there's only so many shots at a Championship. If it was just the regular season, I bet they don't give a single fuck, but getting your name engraved on the cup might be worth the risk. That's the only explanation I can come up with because otherwise if you're the player's union, I'd stop that shit because my players are getting paid regardless and this doesn't potentially risk their careers.

NHL announced that for the purposes of record-keeping, the NHL regular season is now officially over. If they can figure out a way to get the playoffs going, they're going to hold them in a few hub cities. 24 teams will make the playoffs, the top four teams of each conference will play a mini-round robin against each other to determine seeding, the other 8 teams will play a traditional top seed vs bottom seed best of 5. East (City 1) Round Robin for Seeding in First Round (regular season overtime rules apply): 1. Boston Bruins 2. Tampa Bay Lightning 3. Washington Capitals 4. Philadelphia Flyers East (City 1) – Best-of-5 Qualifying Round No. 5 Pittsburgh Penguins vs. No. 12 Montreal Canadiens No. 6 Carolina Hurricanes vs. No. 11 New York Rangers No. 7 New York Islanders vs. No. 10 Florida Panthers No. 8 Toronto Maple Leafs vs. No. 9 Columbus Blue Jackets West (City 2) – Round Robin for Seeding in First Round 1. St. Louis Blues 2. Colorado Avalanche 3. Vegas Golden Knights 4. Dallas Stars West (City 2) – Best-of-5 Qualifying Round No. 5 Edmonton Oilers vs. No. 12 Chicago Blackhawks No. 6 Nashville Predators vs. No. 11 Arizona Coyotes No. 7 Vancouver Canucks vs. No. 10 Minnesota Wild No. 8 Calgary Flames vs. No. 9 Winnipeg Jets I was assuming the players union was gonna shut this shit down, but it sounds like they're on board with trying it. I have zero hope that this is going to play to fruition though. The Mexican soccer league just tried to play a season and just cancelled it because 8 of their players came down with covid. From a pure play standpoint, everyone's going to be relatively healthy and not very sharp, so this might be one of the highest quality postseasons we've seen in a long time.

My dad rants at me about them even though he's not a Leafs fan (acks I guess he sorta is, grew up a Habs fan, cheers for the Canucks and then Canadian teams come playoff time). They spent too much on superstar forwards and are apparently so capped out that they don't have enough for a solid d-core (and can't afford anyone coming off the long-term IR).

It's mid January and the Canucks are hanging around in a division with no clear runaway leader

I'm not sure if he's a star player or not (probably not), but he's definitely a first-line player on any team in the league. Picking up a guy like him theoretically cements Arizona making the playoffs this year

>Taylor Hall to Arizona FFfffuuuuuuuuck

Generational differences rearing their head. We sorta knew about guys like Mike Keenan and John Tortorella anyways, doesn't shock me too much that there's more going on

This Bill Peters shit is pretty weird >Canucks >Up 6-3 against Penguins >Lose 8-6

I meant to join a hockey pool to try to get back into the swing of things but still haven't gotten around to it Canucks probably not making the playoffs this year but we've got kids with potential at every position, so here's hoping we start to see something percolating I guess there's a new rule in the league this year that if a player's helmet comes off, they have to either abandon the play and go put it back on immediately or get back to the bench. Cost the Oilers a goal against the Canucks (Edmonton won anyways so it didn't matter) but I already see something bad happening because of it.