Scott Radley: OHL sets sights on February start
At first blush, the Ontario Hockey League's new plan to start the season in February rather than at the beginning of December as originally hoped offers a glimmer of hope.
Through design or necessity, there are some good-news items coming out of the new road map released Thursday that calls for a 40-game season beginning On Feb. 4 (training camps open Jan. 23) during which teams will mostly play other squads geographically close to them and then a reduced field of just four teams from each of the two conferences will make the playoffs.
Can the Hamilton Bulldogs work with this?
Oh, of course," says team president Steve Staios.
That the OHL didn't stick with its planned December start date and acquiesce to the provincial government's well-meaning-but-goofy demand that it would have to do so without body contact is a good thing. That would have made a mockery of the game.
Also good - though the folks counting the pennies for the teams may not agree - is that reduction in the number of teams making the playoffs. The OHL's bar for admission is laughably low right now with 16 of the league's 20 teams getting in. That devalues the regular season immensely and renders so many of those mid-winter, weeknight games all-but-meaningless.
This change is temporary but it's excellent.
And it's positive that plans are in place for a Memorial Cup next June in either Oshawa or Sault Ste. Marie. This year's event was cancelled. Setting that beacon now offers hope.
After that, though, lies a mine field of concerns for the OHL. The biggest being something not mentioned at all in the league's return-to-play announcement.
Fans.
We don't know - we can't know - whether spectators will be allowed into arenas when play resumes and if so, how many. This has to be the No. 1 challenge for the league.
As is the case with the dormant Canadian Football League, this is a massive concern as there is no giant pot of TV revenue to cover costs. The league lives off ticket revenue and some sponsorship dollars. It needs people in the stands.
It doesn't hurt to be optimistic and believe that could happen by February. But what if it can't? Either way, with the uncertainty people are feeling these days, how do you possibly sell tickets in advance?
It doesn't make a lot of sense to try to project or predict," Staios says. Just be prepared."
This uncertainty will be challenging in a market like Hamilton that doesn't have a massive season-ticket base and hasn't traditionally hasn't been a great walk-up town. Staios says the front office is making a variety of plans and is staying in touch with partners who have expressed support and said they'll be back when the league restarts.
But the real concern doesn't even lie in places like Hamilton. Michael Andlauer is a deep-pocketed owner who's shown a willingness to lose his own money to keep hockey in town. Some teams don't have that luxury.
Some of the small-market organizations that for generations have provided the backbone and soul of this league could be in real trouble if they're forced to play without revenue streams. Asking some of them to eat the losses they'd surely incur is too much. On the flip side, not playing for a season would be horribly problematic, too.
It's a bit of a nightmare. But at least it's a nightmare for another day. Today there's a road map. Yes, there are a lot of unanswered questions - Staios says there is no date set for the release of a schedule, a determination of which teams fall into the Bulldogs' geographic region, an announcement about fans, whether checking will be allowed or a bunch of other things - but it's a start.
Allowing some more time to figure everything out ... is the plan," he says.
The hope is that as the calendar flips into the new year, COVID-19 will finally decide it's messed up enough stuff and move along letting some parts of normal return.
Beginning with hockey.
Scott Radley is a Hamilton-based columnist at The Spectator. Reach him via email: sradley@thespec.com