OilersNation Top 25 of 2020: #15 — Edmonton to be NHL hub city
By Zach Laing
3 years agoWelcome to the yearly wrap up of the top read articles over the last year!
One of the biggest stories in Edmonton this year was the cities ability to land the ability to host NHL games.
With the pandemic shortening the regular season, Edmonton was one of two cities — alongside Toronto — to host NHL games.
A story on the news breaking, published by me on June 30, was the 15th most-read article this year.
Edmonton had been rumoured to be in the mix for the hub city spot for a while. The province as a whole had low cases numbers and with the luxurious ice district, it became the place to be for the NHL.
Here’s some of what I wrote about the league’s decision at the time.
Look, this whole situation is a little confusing and definitely crazy. As McKenzie noted in his report, the situation is wildly fluid meaning things could change at any point.But, once again, Edmonton appears to be a front runner. McKenzie is also reporting that the new CBA will need to be intact for the return-to-play to happen. I wrote about what that looks like this weekend.While there continue to be active cases popping up in Edmonton and Toronto, the numbers in both cities are nothing compared to what has occurred in areas considered to be hubs in the U.S.Alberta as a province reported 41 new cases Tuesday while all of Ontario reported 157 new cases. Alberta has 547 active cases while all of Ontario has 2,052 active cases.In Nevada where Las Vegas has been reported to be a frontrunner as a hub city in the past, there were a reported 562 new cases on Tuesday alone. The virus appears to be wreaking havoc in the U.S., so it only makes sense that games could be hosted in Canada where case numbers are drastically lower.Once again, this all could change at the blink of an eye but it appears more and more that games will be coming to Edmonton.
On Twitter: @zjlaing
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