NHL gearing up for January season start

NEW YORK • Protracted negotiations involving the National Hockey League (NHL), its board of governors, the players' union and several moving parts related to municipal, state, provincial and national protocols in Canada and the United States culminated on Sunday with an agreement for next season.

The 2020-21 NHL regular season will begin on Jan 13 and, if all goes according to plan, end in mid-July after a 56-game regular season and a 16-team, four-round play-off best-of-seven series featuring the top four teams from each division.

The league hopes to return to its regular 82-game schedule next October for the 2021-22 season.

"The National Hockey League looks forward to the opening of our 2020-21 season, especially since the return to play in 2019-20 was so successful in crowning a Stanley Cup champion," the league's commissioner, Gary Bettman, said.

"While we are well aware of the challenges ahead, as was the case last spring and summer, we are continuing to prioritise the health and safety of our participants and the communities in which we live and play."

The agreement for the 2020-21 season was a product of the latest round of labour talks and logistical undertakings.

After the 2019-20 season was suspended in March, the parties ratified a plan for the play-offs and a collective bargaining agreement that overwrote the existing pact, and extended it through the 2025-26 season.

Still, moving targets made further negotiations necessary, and some aspects of the coming campaign remained unclear on Sunday.

The league said it would make further announcements regarding personnel rules and health and safety protocols - including vaccination, testing and other Covid-related issues - in the coming days.

Negotiations had been complicated in part by the presence of seven Canadian franchises.

Nationally and in some of its most populous cities like Toronto, Canada has used much stricter measures than the United States to minimise the spread of the coronavirus.

The NHL's solution was divisional realignment and a seismic scheduling shift.

There will still be four divisions - three with eight teams and one with seven - but they have been reorganised so one division consists of all the Canadian franchises.

NYTIMES