Montreal Canadiens games in the near future just became one step closer to reality.
Montreal Canadiens hockey hasn’t bene played since they were ousted by the Philadelphia Flyers in the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs in August. The schedule and starting point for the 2020-21 season has been up in the air ever since, but there was significant progress made tonight.
The National Hockey League and the National Hockey League Player’s Association have been trying to come to terms on what the upcoming season should look like. While rumours have swirled lately, nothing concrete has been finalized.
Until tonight, that is. The two sides have reached an agreement on the upcoming season.
The news was broken by Pierre LeBrun of TSN, who tweeted not long ago that the two sides have come to terms and that they aren’t going to waste much time trying to finish this process.
The NHL has reached an agreement with the NHLPA on the season, pending respective votes by each side.
— Pierre LeBrun (@PierreVLeBrun) December 19, 2020
NHL plans to schedule a Board of Governors call/vote sometime this weekend. The NHLPA already had an exec board call scheduled for 8 pm ET tonight.
It sounds like the players will be discussing this agreement tonight while the owners will be talking about it over the weekend.
Details of the agreement began to leak out immediately, with reporters and insiders stating a 56 game schedule would begin on January 13th, with training camps starting on January 3rd. Players will have the option to opt-out of the season just like they did in the return to play over the summer.
Interestingly, teams will be able to carry a 4-6 man taxi squad above their regular 23 man roster. These players would be paid a full AHL salary but wouldn’t count against the NHL salary cap unless they were “called up” or added to the NHL roster.
The biggest question that remains unanswered, is where would the Canadian teams play? There is no confirmation from government officials that Montreal will be allowed to play games at the Bell Centre. If they aren’t allowed to play home games in Montreal, will they have to enter another bubble for the whole season? Move to the United States so they don’t have to worry about Canadian Covid restrictions which are much tighter than the American version?
That’s a huge question mark obviously, but it is a huge hurdle cleared that the NHL and NHLPA have agreed to terms for the upcoming season.