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| - The National Hockey League announced Tuesday it will abandon the rest of the regular season and go straight into a conference-based playoff format with 24 teams competing in two hub cities. "We believe we have constructed an overall plan that includes all teams that as a practical matter might have had a chance of qualifying for the playoffs when the season was paused. And this plan will produce a worthy Stanley Cup champion," NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said. "While we are hopeful we will be able to resume play and award the Stanley Cup, we intend to do it with timetable that allows us to get back to a full calendar for the 2020-21 season." Bettman did not give specific dates for a return to play and said the two hub cities would be chosen at a later date. He said training camps won't open until July 1 at the earliest, and confirmed that small groups of players will be able to resume working out at the teams' training facilities in early June. Formal training camps won't take place before the first half of July, he said. The NHL season has been on pause since March 12 due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and all players currently remain under league-mandated quarantine. Phase 2 of the NHL's return also includes protocols for travelling to club cities, testing, opening practice facilities and the small group workouts. Those on-ice sessions are only for players, with no coaches or other team personnel are allowed on the ice. He said there are currently 10 cities in the running for the two hub centres, including seven from the US: Chicago, Columbus, Dallas, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh. The three Canadian cities are Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton. Bettman said the list of cities is long because the situation with the coronavirus pandemic can change quickly. "We didn't want to get locked in. We don't want to go to a place where there is a lot of Covid-19 or we don't want to go to a place where we can't get the testing we need," he said. "There is going to extensive testing. It must be available on wide-scale basis without obstructing local needs." He reiterated earlier reports that the playoff format would begin with best-of-five series, but the Stanley Cup final would be the traditional best-of-seven. "We anticipate playing into the late summer and early fall," he said. Under the proposed schedule, the top four seeds in each conference would play a round robin tournanment for first-round seedings. The top four seeds in the Eastern Conference hub city would be the Boston Bruins, Tampa Bay Lightning, Washington Capitals and Philadelphia Flyers. The top four Western Conference teams would be the St. Louis Blues, Colorado Avalanche, Vegas Golden Knights and Dallas Stars. The other 16 teams in both conferences would play in a best-of-five first round. The rest of the bracketed playoff format would have the five vs. 12 winner playing the fourth seed, the six vs. 11 winner playing the three seed, the seven vs. 10 winner playing the two seed and the eight vs. nine winner playing the one seed in best-of-seven series. Bettman spent the past few days talking with the league owners and 31 general managers who appear for the most part to be in agreement with the plan. While the NHL still has a lot of issues to address, ice hockey, unlike Major League Baseball, is getting the restart done with as little bickering between the owners and the players union as possible. "The Return to Play Plan is the result of weeks of constructive dialogue with the National Hockey League Players Association and we are grateful for their co-operation," Bettman said. Bettman also said the Draft Lottery would go ahead on June 26, adding they still had to decide whether it would done in one or two phases. gph/rcw
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