Bruins' Jake DeBrusk hopeful for 75-80 game NHL regular season, playoffs

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Jake DeBrusk obviously isn’t sure what’s going to happen with the remainder of the 2019-20 NHL regular season and postseason.

“My personal thought on it is that we want to play and we were having a good season,” said DeBrusk, during a Wednesday Zoom conference call with Bruins reporters. “We want to continue that, but it's a matter of safety at this point. We're all in it together."

The NHL regular season has been on pause since the first week in March due to the viral outbreak with about a month left to be played and there are still two months worth of Stanley Cup Playoffs still on the table as well. The NHL is working through a number of different scenarios with an eye toward still playing a portion of the regular season before readying for a postseason where the Stanley Cup could be awarded at the end.

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The latest, according to ESPN, is a plan for two to four NHL cities to host the games across North America with sites like North Carolina, Minnesota and Edmonton in the running along with an Atlantic Division location that’s yet to be determined. The sites would be chosen based on areas where the COVID-19 outbreak has been managed and where restrictions would allow the games to be played likely to empty arenas.

It would appear the idea of neutral-site locations like North Dakota and New Hampshire are out because they simply couldn’t host NHL events where there will need to be infrastructure for multiple teams, league officials and broadcasters.

It would take NHLPA approval, some kind of universal testing and NHL players willing to pick up and quarantine themselves while they are playing, and there has been no timetable for any of this to happen. Even the sunniest of scenarios for the Stanley Cup Playoffs would have them taking place in the summer rather than anytime over the next few weeks or months.

Florida Panthers President and CEO Matthew Caldwell said on Tuesday, per Fox Sports 640, that the NHL is moving toward possibly resuming the season in July with limited, or zero, fans in attendance for the games.

"The players right now are all quarantined. I know for the NHL, our players are quarantined through the end of April, and that will probably be extended into May,” said Caldwell. “But when we are able to come out of the quarantine period, players are going to need time to work out. I think all leagues are thinking about some training camp that we would do before the start of the season.

"So that's going to take us into the June time-frame. At least with the NHL, we're trying to target some times in July. When we feel that players are safe, and we have enough testing and we have enough ways to get back on the ice for us, it's probably going to be contained at playing at four or five neutral sites. So that's all being discussed right now. My guess is that we would start with limited fans or empty arenas. So just with the teams and the associated staffs.”

It remains to be seen if anybody would be at the arenas aside from essential staff to run and broadcast the games, but it’s easy to envision scenarios where teams play games against divisional opponents in the same arena over the course of each day Olympics-style with the regular season concluding in a few weeks.

When the NHL does resume, DeBrusk hopes that the schedule will allow for all NHL teams to get up to 75 or 80 games in a scenario that would accomplish a couple of goals: A) all teams would get a fair chance at a playoff spot with an equal number of games played and B) a handful of regular season games would give NHL players a proper tune-up ahead of the playoffs.

“I think as soon as we can play, that’s the best way to go at it,” said DeBrusk. “At the same time, we want to make sure we’re safe and ready to go. There are certain teams that are in playoff races that have more games played than [other] teams that are trying to catch them and vice-versa. I think we definitely need to figure out a way to even that out.

“Just even to kind of get some kind of game-feel going into the playoffs, you kind of need to prepare for the workload that the playoffs bring, especially if you go on a long run. To take a break like this with nobody skating or working out at gyms, the best way to combat it is to play a couple of games. Maybe five games? If we play the season out to 75 or 80 games and then go right into the playoffs it would kind of even things out for the teams fighting for those playoff spots, and make sure we’re looking out for all of our health and safety.”

The Bruins are sitting at 70 games played on the season, so playing a five game tune-up ahead of the postseason would make a lot of sense for an experienced, older team that’s going to need time to ramp up. Other teams like the Hurricanes and Islanders would need to play seven more games to get up to 75 games played and teams like the Blues, Jets, Oilers and Canadiens would need only four games played to get to that number.

So it might not be perfect for anyone, but all of it proves that the NHL is exhausting every last avenue and possibility to put a bow on the 2019-20 season if possible. Only time will tell if it’s all in vain or if one of these scenarios will allow the NHL to produce playoff hockey this summer for its fans.

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