Random Thoughts: Following the NBA’s lead, changes at Rogers Place, and Holland’s to-do list

With the NHL closing in on two months since playing its last games, I’ve had a lot of time to sit around and think about what’s going on and what is yet to come. Today, I wanted to throw down a few different thoughts and questions that have been rolling around in my head in the hopes that you fair citizens will be able to help me find some answers.

On Sunday afternoon, The Associated Press reported that the NBA will be opening up their training facilities to players provided that local governments do no have stay-at-home orders in place as a means of mitigating the spread of Coronavirus. According to the AP, any workouts would have to be voluntary and limited to lone individuals and any group sessions would still being strictly prohibited. Teams aren’t able to organize workouts and it would be up to the players to decide if they want to use the facilities or not, but since many of them haven’t played much basketball since the league was shut down, you’d have to believe there would be significant interest. After all, these guys want to play. However, the NBA’s decision does not at all mean that a resumption of games is anywhere close to happening, but allowing teams back into their training facilities is still a significant step forward, making me wonder how far the NHL is from following along.

Over at Sportsnet, Chris Johnston looked at this very question:

When the Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19 and professional basketball shut down, the NHL was quick to do the same (the only decision really) and all eyes will be on Gary Bettman’s office to see if that will happen again here. There are some NHL cities like Edmonton that have done a reasonable job of limiting the spread of the virus (fingers crossed) and I wonder how much a team like the Oilers is investigating its options? That said, there was also a report from Ryan Rishaug yesterday that said Oilers players like Connor McDavid and Darnell Nurse have left the city to return home, which seems like the opposite of what you’d expect if facilities are opening soon and another nail in the coffin on the idea of getting anywhere closer to playing games. Even so, it’s endlessly clear that these leagues want to play again and I wonder how this guineapig run with NBA sites will affect the NHL’s plans in the coming days and weeks.

When NHL fans are safely able to return to arenas around the league, whenever the hell that might be, I’ll be very intrigued to see what teams do to lure people back into the building. With the way so many of us have lost jobs or income over the past month+, spending whatever money we do have on hockey tickets seems like it’ll be pretty damned low on the list of priorities. That’s not to say that we won’t want to watch games, I’d bed that the TV ratings for all sports will be gigantic whenever they do come back, but will there be an appetite to spend a few hundred dollars on an Oilers game when every penny counts as part of a household budget?

That got me thinking about what the Oilers and other teams are going to do for their fans as a means of encouraging them to buy tickets, merch, food, and everything else that goes along with a night at Rogers Place. Are they going to have to cut ticket prices in half? Would they hack the price of merch and concessions? Will they do a combination of all of the above? Or are they going to keep things as they were and hope that people will spend whatever entertainment funds they have on the Oilers? Obviously, we’re living in the land of make-believe here since we’re nowhere close to being allowed back in the ol’ barn, but I can’t help but wonder what the team’s approach will be to a very real problem they’ll be facing eventually? You’d have to think these conversations are happening in NHL board rooms across the continent, right?

In the weeks that have passed since the last game against the Jets, Ken Holland has been slowly chipping away on his summer to-do list and quietly getting quite a bit done. We’ve already seen him sign defensive prospect Filip Berglund, offer a contract to Anton Slepyshev, and close in on deals with Gaetan Haas and Swedish defender, Theodor Lennstrom. Needless to say, Uncle Ken isn’t wasting any time in adding depth and re-signing pieces that he feels are going to help this hockey club moving forward. Personally, I like seeing the way he’s chipping away and knocking things off the list considering there’s nothing going on, but I also wonder how many pieces of the band are going to come back?

At the time of posting, Riley Sheahan, Tyler Ennis, Mike Smith, and Mike Green are all impending UFAs and it will be interesting to see which (if any) of these guys will get offered a contract for an extended stay in the City of Champions. Sheahan? Ennis? Maybe more? Who the hell knows? Looking at the RFAs, Holland also needs to make offers to Andreas Athanasiou and Ethan Bear, both of whom could be important pieces for this franchise moving forward, but it’s tough to set a price when you don’t know where the salary cap will be. What would you even offer a guy like Athanasiou that didn’t get much of a chance to show what he could do before getting banged up and having the season shut down by a once in a century pandemic? Not to mention, was this Oilers team so good this year that bringing back all of the same players makes sense?

Before we start here, I know that the Jesse Puljujarvi saga has been going on for well over a year now and talking about it is like kicking a dead horse that’s been mostly eaten by scavengers, but there could be another chapter in this story. Just last week, Puljujarvi was playing some twitch vids with friend of the Nation, Larvinen, when he was asked about whether or not he’d ever consider a return to Edmonton. We’ve heard his agent say that he’d never play another game with the Oilers so that had to be that, right? Puljujarvi offered a simple, “never say never.”

Normally, I wouldn’t even both including something so minor, but seeing him say something other than the ‘it’s time to move on’ story that we’ve heard for the past year made me think it was interesting that maybe something has changed? We already know Uncle Ken has been working the phones on re-signing players and adding depth to the roster, and it could be that some of those phone calls have gone out to Finland as well. Besides, even with this neverending story going over like a warm turd for thanksgiving dinner around these parts, we may we well look ahead at what’s to come because we could be doing it for a while.

Do we care? Who knows at this point. Will we follow along anyway? Absolutely.