NHL and NHLPA Reach Tentative Agreement on Return-to-Play Plan, CBA Extension
By baggedmilk
3 years agoThis afternoon, the NHL and NHLPA announced that they have come to a tentative agreement on both the plan for the league’s summer return as a well as a four-year CBA extension.
The National Hockey League (NHL) and National Hockey League Players’ Association (NHLPA) have reached a tentative agreement on a Return to Play Plan and Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that adds an additional four years to the term of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement and includes transition rules and a new critical dates calendar. As part of the tentative agreement, the following dates have been established: July 13 – Start of formal training camps; July 26 – Clubs travel to hub cities; August 1 – Start of Qualifying Round. The tentative agreement is now subject to approval by the NHL’s Board of Governors, as well as the NHLPA’s Executive Board followed by the full NHLPA membership. The respective review and approval processes will take place over the next few days and there will be no further comment until those processes are completed.
It was a big afternoon for hockey as both the league and its players association jointly announced that they had reached a middle ground on a plan to get the 2019-20 season back underway as well as a tentative agreement to ensure labour peace until at least 2026. This morning, Robin Brownlee broke down some of the details regarding the NHL’s plan to keep the players safe during their bubble time and only time will tell whether or not it will work, but it’s been encouraging to see both sides working together on making it happen.
Not only are we getting closer to potentially watching hockey again, but we also got the bonus news that there won’t be another lockout happening anytime soon, something this league has A) seen far often in recent memory, and B) would be a devasting financial blow after already trying to navigate a pandemic.
LET’S GO!
As Cam wrote in his piece about the new CBA yesterday, varying insiders were reporting that training camps are expected to kick off on July 13th with players arriving in the two hub cities on July 26th, and the play-in rounds starting up a week later. Today’s announcement between the NHL and NHLPA confirmed all three dates, making the reality of a summer hockey Stanley Cup tournament look more and more realistic. Could it actually be that we’re going to see the NHL get back on the ice?
I don’t know about you guys, but even thinking about watching meaningful hockey games is starting to get me excited — the last game the Oilers played feels like a lifetime ago at this point. And I know that it’s going to be odd to watch fanless hockey in August, but I also can’t help but feel like we’re going to get over that very quickly. My prediction is that we’ll spend much of the first period talking about how weird it is to have an NHL game under these circumstances, but that we’ll be yelling about the refs shortly after.
Now, there’s always the possibility that something will go off the rails in terms of COVID-19, more and more players seem to be testing positive by the day, but having dates confirmed on the calendar for when we can watch (hopefully) Connor and Leon do their thing again has this guy feeling incredibly happy. However, just because there’s a plan on paper for when the show gets going again, that doesn’t mean that we’re in the clear as there is still plenty of work left to do to ensure that the players, team staff, and surrounding communities can safely pull this off.
As always, we wait.
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