As more and more NHL players and coaches have addressed the media, one thing seems common, even if obvious: They can’t just start games right back up once cleared to play.
The league is on pause amid the COVID-19 outbreak, and despite uncertainty that the current season even can finish, the NHL seems hellbent on finding ways to restart the campaign back and somehow finish it.
And on a media conference call Monday afternoon, Boston Bruins head coach shared how long a training camp to restart the season would have to be in order to get going.
“What would be the timeline, that would depend to me entirely on have they been able to skate on their own at some point before we go?” Cassidy said. “So, for example, if we’re told we have to stay off the ice until June 30th and we start July 1st and no one’s been on the ice, then I think you have to have a minimum of at least two weeks to get guys up and running. If they’ve been allowed to skate at our facility, whether it’s in small groups, by themselves, large groups, whatever that’s determined, then that number could go down a little bit.
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“But I can’t see anybody saying you’ve got to start in three or four days, if you’ve been able to participate in workouts, unstructured or unsupervised like you’re allowed to in early September before camp and (you can have) a number of them, then maybe a week is enough if you’re building in a few regular-season games. The next part of that, is if it’s no regular-season games and right into the playoffs, I don’t see how no matter what you can get started before two weeks and not risk the safety of the players.”
The Bruins have a pretty wide age gap on their team — Charlie McAvoy and Jeremy Lauzon are the youngest at 22, while Zdeno Chara is 43. As such, getting the motor going will be at least a little different for some guys compared to others.
With that in mind, Cassidy thoroughly laid out how they would approach ramping things back up.
“Well, obviously, it will be a different scenario because most of the guys — all of the guys — typically in a normal year would have been skating in August, early September, some in July at their own pace that they feel is best for them,” Cassidy said. “This instance I don’t know if we’ll have that luxury before or not. Right now they don’t. So I think it starts with your strength and conditioning coach and your medical team, where are they at, what is the risk of injury if we ramp up too quickly? So you’ll get some feedback and direction from their standpoint. I think the medical team typically deals with guys coming off, especially if it’s injury, where they can’t skate for an extended period of time, so they’ll probably have a good idea of what the load should be. Then I’ve got to balance that with how much time do we actually have — do we have seven days of camp, do we have 17 days? That factors into how fast we can ramp up. And then I think it’s a personal conversation with each player.
“Obviously, Bergy, Zee, they may need a little more time or different intensity than maybe a DeBrusk or Pasta that’s younger. So those are all the things that will go into it. My expectation like everyone else’s is we’ve got to be ready in a hurry. We’ve got to be ready quicker than the next team, and that’s just very hard to predict because no one’s been through this. I know our players are excited about this opportunity, assuming it’s coming, so that part of it I think they’ll be highly motivated to get themselves ready to play, and that’s where you hope during this break that guys have done the best and the most that they can right now just so they don’t have to play too much catchup.”
For now, teams are just in a holding pattern. But it seems clear that whenever the time comes, Cassidy and Co. have an outline for how they’ll need to get started again.
