There’s been a lot of uncertainty surrounding the NHL 2020/2021 season due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The most recent report is that the season could be delayed until late December or January.
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman spoke about this at his annual state of the league address ahead of the Stanley Cup Finals, “Dec. 1 has always been a notional date. I will not be surprised if it slips into later December, could slip into January. But there’s no point right now in making any definitive comments on our plans because there’s still too much we don’t know.”
He also added that he’s optimistic about an 82-game season with the best of seven series in the playoffs.
In addition, he addressed technicalities including fans’ presence, “It’s conceivable that we start without fans, that we move to socially distant fans at some point, and by some point in time maybe our buildings are open.”
Due to the pandemic, the NHL decided to cut the 2019/20 regular season short with a three-game series play-in tournament for the teams that were contenders for the playoffs. The later stages of the Stanley Cup playoffs took place as usual with a seven-game series.
