Boston Bruins: NHL Should Consider This in Future Seasons
Last March, the Boston Bruins, and the sports world came to a crashing halt because of the coronavirus pandemic that went global. When everything shut down on March 12, nobody knew what was going to come in the months ahead.
For the Bruins and the rest of the NHL, there were plenty of questions. Would the league finish the regular-season? Would they be able to pull off the playoffs and crown a Stanley Cup champion after most teams played around 70 of their 82 game schedule?
In May, the league canceled the remainder of the regular-season and announced a Return to Play where they would use two hub cities. The top four teams in each conference would play three Round Robin games to determine the top-four seeds for the postseason. The No. 5-12 seeds would play a best-of-five Qualifying Round series to advance to play the top-four seeds in a normal best-of-seven series.
Using Edmonton and Toronto as the Hub cities, the league was able to successfully pull off the playoffs over two months without one single positive test in the bubble. After a short offseason, the league put together a different-looking 2021 NHL season and they may have found something that is worth using moving forward.
The Bruins and the rest of the NHL playing a different-looking 2021 season and one of the new wrinkles is worth keeping moving forward.
The NHL is like the rest of the sports world and not using a bubble to navigate their way through the shortened 56-game season. To limit travel during the ongoing pandemic, the league realigned divisions to cut down travel and they are keeping all the Canadian teams, Noth of the Border, because of travel restrictions between the U.S. and Canada.
The schedule looks different, but one thing that the league has done to hit it out of the park is setting up a baseball-style schedule with teams playing a lot of two-game series in the same city.
Boston has played six sets of the two-game series this winter and in my opinion, the reviews have been nothing short of great.
Take Friday night’s 1-0 win over the New York Rangers at Madison Square Garden. Forty-eight hours after the Bruins beat the Blue Shirts 3-2 in overtime on a Brad Marchand breakaway goal, the two teams squared off and an old-fashioned hockey game broke out between two Original Six teams.
There were two-second period fights, a lot of pushing and shoving after the whistles, and two teams that we not clearly fond of each other which made for a great night of hockey. On Feb. 5, the Bruins beat the Philadelphia Flyers 2-1 in the second game of a two-game series in Philly. That game was another battle of two teams that played each other for the second time in two nights and clearly, there were a lot of bad feelings with a very physical game and pushing and shoving after whistles with punches thrown.
There is hope that the NHL can return to a “normal” season for the 2021-22 season with an 82-game schedule and back to the old division and riviralies. One thing that the NHL should seriously consider and keeping the two-game series, especially within division games. It’s not possible to do when you play a team from the opposite conference, but within the conference and division, it’s something they should consider.
Major League Baseball has decided to move forward in their 2021 season with some of the same rule changes they implemented for the 2020 season. Seven inning doubleheaders are returning, as is starting extra innings with a runner on second.
The NHL should follow MLB and keep some two-game series next season and beyond.