It was recently announced that the NHL will begin its season on January 13th and will have 56 games. What should Sabres fans expect the season to look like?
There we have it. According to ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski, the NHL is looking to start the season on January 13th. The season looks like it will include a 56 game schedule. So it seems that we can say, in confidence now, that we are just over a month away from Buffalo Sabres hockey being back.
There are some noticeable changes to what we are normally used to seeing in an NHL season, but this should not come as a surprise as this year as a whole has been far from normal. The most obvious change, one that we have seen with all sports, is to not expect to see arenas filled with fans for this upcoming season, at least not at the beginning of the year.
Another noticeable change for this season that we have never seen before is the potential of having “homestands” for teams. This would be very similar to what baseball does, playing two or three games in a row at the same arena against the same team. As the NHL does not want to have the season in a bubble format as they did for the playoffs last season, a majority of owners and players prefer this homestand proposal.
If a situation arises that a team is unable to play in their home arena, much like we are seeing with the San Fransisco 49ers not being able to play in their home stadium due to restrictions in Santa Clara County, we could see some teams sharing arenas if need be. Hopefully, that situation will never arise.
There are also dates set for training camp. The league announced that the teams that did not participate in the NHL playoffs last season will be able to start training camp on December 28th, and the rest of the league will be able to open their camps on January 1st.
It is nice to finally be able to say that we will get a season with confidence. There are a few more things that need to be worked out within the league, but there is no reason to believe that this mid-January start date will not be met.