By Alan Snel of LVSportsBiz.com
An abbreviated preseason started Monday for the Vegas Golden Knights as they joined 30 other NHL teams for a 56-game sprint of a regular season to the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Fan favorites like goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury and Jonathan Marchessault hit the camp ice at the VGK ice center in Summerlin, while prospects looking to make a name for themselves also suited up. And new veteran defenseman Alex Pietrangelo, acquired as a free agent, also hit the ice.
With COVID-19 claiming the lives of 350,000 Americans, the National Hockey League has created a 56-game schedule with the league split into four divisions, including one of solely Canadian teams. While the NHL relied on controlled “bubble” environments in Edmonton for the Western Conference teams and Toronto for the Eastern Conference last summer, teams will have to police themselves to try and keep players from being infected with the novel coronavirus.
“You can see from following the NBA and NFL that COVID is a factor. This is completely different from bubble when we had zero positive tests on 24 teams. It’s really important that our team follows the protocols and that we mitigate risk,” VGK General Manager Kelly McCrimmon said on Zoom Sunday.
From a business standpoint, the Knights will be hurt bigtime in their bank accounts because fans will not be allowed to attend games. In the National Hockey League, teams generate about half of their revenues from game-related spending and the league does not have lucrative national broadcast rights deals like you see in the National Football League.
But the Knights are aggressive in pursuing sponsors and they even have a training camp sponsor — Martin-Harris Construction. The Knights’ Twitter operator issued this message among the team’s many Tweets: “We don’t want to you miss a second of Training Camp presented by Martin-Harris Construction”
VGK coach Pete DeBoer after the first practice: “I think we’ve got competition everywhere. We have it in net, we have it on defense, and we have it up front particularly in the middle of the ice. Coaches get excited about that because that’s when you see a guy’s best.”
And Chandler Stephenson offered these comments after camp today: “Our coaching staff and everyone here is preaching for us to come right out of the gate and be one of the top teams. Everybody here believes that we can do that.”
American Hockey League President/CEO Scott Howson said the 2020-21 season will include 28 teams when it gets underway on February 5. The AHL will have five divisions this season. Further details, including schedule formats and playoffs, are still to be determined. Four teams have been granted provisional relocations for the 2020-21 season: the Binghamton Devils will play in Newark, N.J.; the Ontario Reign will play in El Segundo, Calif.; the Providence Bruins will play in Marlborough, Mass.; and the San Diego Gulls will play in Irvine, Calif.
Meanwhile, the Charlotte Checkers, Milwaukee Admirals and Springfield Thunderbirds have elected to opt out of play for the 2020-21 season. All three teams will return to play in 2021-22.
LVSportsBiz.com will be talking with former VGK pregame radio host Frank Harnish at 6 PM Monday on the LVSportsBiz.com Facebook page.