NHL Could Start Season in Mid-January with Smaller Schedule, Hubs, Per Bettman

Like the NBA, the NHL is looking at an abbreviated season, with commissioner Gary Bettman saying the league would likely begin the 2020-21 season in January.

"We are focused on starting at some point hopefully in mid-January," he said during a video panel at the World Hockey Forum on Wednesday. "... It is clear that we will not be playing an 82-game schedule for the regular season, which we normally do, but we're going to try to play as many games as possible."

A number of factors are affecting the upcoming season, from travel restrictions between the United States and Canada to the varying rules and regulations in various cities and regions amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Right now, we're focused on whether or not we're going to play in our buildings and do some limited traveling or play in a bubble, and that's something we're working on and getting medical advice on," Bettman said.

Bettman added that it wouldn't be feasible to expect players to remain away from their families for an entire season in a bubble format such as the one the league utilized upon its return to play in the 2019-20 campaign. But Bettman said adjustments and flexibility would be expected:

"So, for example, we have a couple of clubs that can't hold training camp or conduct games even without fans in their current buildings and facilities, and we're going to have to move them somewhere else to play. If enough teams can't play, again, without fans, in their own facilities, then we may have to move more and more towards a hub. It may be that some teams are playing in other buildings. It may be that a whole group of teams have to play in other buildings. One of the things that we're doing for the regular season, as we're planning it, is we're going to just play within our divisions, so we're not going to play every team against everybody else in the course of a season."

Bettman said that realignment was even on the table, with the possibility of having the Canadian teams play each other and shifting the United States teams into geographical divisions as well.

The NBA has implemented a 72-game season, with its only Canadian team, the Toronto Raptors, playing this season out of Tampa Bay, Florida, because of Canada's non-essential travel ban to and from the United States amid the pandemic. That's a trickier proposition for the NHL, which has seven Canadian teams.

"With the current situation, it is almost impossible for the government to reasonably sanction back and forth travel outside a bubble," Dr. Andrew Morris, University of Toronto professor of infectious diseases and the medical director of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program at Sinai-University Health Network, told ESPN in November.