*Photo from The Athletic*
Well, the NHL will be taking their holiday break a few days early. The NHL and the NHLPA have agreed to pause the regular season from December 22 to December 25, giving the players an early start to the annual Christmas break. The announcement was made by the NHL on Monday night.
As part of the season being paused, teams must suspend all day to day operations, and there will be no practices at team facilites and no Covid-19 testing. As of 4:30 on Tuesday, the Tuesday night game between the Vegas Golden Knights and Tampa Bay Lightning game will go on as scheduled. There currently are no plans to push back any of the 14 games slated for December 27, when the holiday break ends.
This has been a struggle of a stretch for the NHL. Several cross border games between U.S. and Canadian teams had already been called off, and there were 11 teams that were shut down until after Christmas anyway due to Covid-19 outbreaks within the organizations. As of Monday night, over 15% of the NHL player population was in the league's Covid-19 protocols.
The pause in the season has now reached 50 games that have been postponed, with 44 of those postponements coming in the last 7 days. One thing that had factored into the pause was a desire to keep competitive balance intact across the league.
After the pause, the NHL will reportedly be introducing stricter Covid-19 protocols for all teams to follow, which make it eerily similar to the protocols put in place for the shortened season last year. Daily testing will come back, and social distancing measures that restrict movement when teams are on the road, in their hotels.
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