The Masked Fan

Is NHL Return to Play in jeopardy?

Already on the ropes, baseball could be dealt death blow with no 2020 season

LARSMONT… It had been rumored that the NHL would finally announce which two NHL cities would become the “hubs” for their much anticipated Stanley Cup tournament early in the week of June 22. Along with that was the expectation that some dates and times would MASKED FAN by also be applied to that MARC information. But now ELLIOT that could all be up in the air once again due to the number of positive tests received last week from various teams, players and personnel within the league. All had been proceeding along smoothly until 11 players tested positive for the virus since the advent of the Phase 2 of the Return to Play plan commenced on June 8, enabling players to return to team practice facilities in small groups.

This has pushed one team, the Tampa Bay Lightning to close their facility back down. The league had tested more than 200 players thus far, and upon testing positive, those players were placed back into an isolation and observation protocol. A few staff members have tested positive as well.

The league announced that it would not identify the clubs, players or personnel that did test positive. It had been rumored that Toronto Maple Leaf star Auston Matthews was one of the players that tested positive, but as best as I can tell, that rumor quieted down rather quickly.

Some individuals that have tested positive for the virus went into the isolation period without ever becoming ill from it. They emerged from the isolation after finally testing negative once again.

The recommended test is known as a Nasopharyngeal swab test. A medical technician will insert specially made six-inch cotton swabs into both sides of your nose and then move them around for about 15 seconds, remove them and dispatch them to a lab to test the material from inside of your nose. It is a bit uncomfortable as noted by my daughter Chelsey, who, as a medical lab worker, has had to be tested, but not necessarily painful.

A positive test doesn’t mean you An empty Camden Yards on April 29, 2015, when the Baltimore Orioles beat the Chicago White Sox 8-2 in the first crowdless game ever played by MLB teams. That game was played without fans due to civil unrest in Baltimore after the police custody death 10 days earlier of Freddie Gray, but with a steadily declining number of fans, baseball could be in real trouble if there is no play in 2020. Photo by James G. Howes.

will become ill from the virus, merely that you are carrying it. For those who do become ill, it can be a nasty experience.

Patients who have gotten sick from it report that it’s flu-like, with the worst cases also having a major impact on efficient breathing. Most patients do recover from it, but like the extreme cases of influenza, there are also a substantial number of deaths.

As of this writing there have been 2.3 million confirmed cases diagnosed here, with 122k deaths attributed to it. Experts in the USA estimate there have been 12,000 to 61,000 deaths annually from influenza since 2010. The number of deaths attributed to the COVID virus have blown right past that in the first five months of 2020.

Much has been made of the readiness and/or reaction of the United States government to the COVID situation and it isn’t inaccurate to say that it has been inadequate. This is patently unacceptable since it’s own experts were predicting three years ago of the looming pandemic. Once again, while our pols are busy catering to the elites, the people have been hung out to die…

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL STILL FINDS itself in disarray, having not been able to come to terms with the Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) on anything relative to having a 2020 major league season. Whether it’s how many games will be played, to what level of compensation the players would receive as well as other lesser details, the sides are making just about zero progress on anything.

This has led several expert analysts to contemplate whether there will be ANY season at all in 2020. To my thinking the longer term implications of this could be devastating to the future of the game. The league has already experienced declines in total attendance in six of the last seven seasons, and the 2019 attendance figures were down 1.7% from the 2018 season.

This has a spiraling downward effect of course. Fewer fans at the gate mean fewer concession sales, fewer souvenir revenues, which will eventually lead to smaller TV contracts if it were to continue. For the four major sports in North America, those TV revenues are the basic lifelines for these leagues.

All of this has only made me wonder if both parties here understand the impending negative impact of a contentious negotiation between them. If some fans have already concluded that in a take-it-or-leave-it scenario that they could leave it, you would have to believe that leadership from both sides surely must recognize that and conduct their business accordingly. Irritated fans do them no good and in fact could do them great harm.

For decades now both MLB and the NFL have had it pretty good. In spite of some occasional labor strife they were able to maintain, grow and at least revenue-wise, were able to get fat and happy financially speaking. Everyone made money. Player salaries – especially those of the players at the top of their sports – grew in spectacular fashion. Are we about to witness a regression of that?

It’s no secret that the MLBPA has been unhappy with the general scheme of “things” since the settlement of the 2016 CBA. Behind the scenes the group is quite concerned that free agent player salaries haven’t seen any major upward movement in the recent past and it wouldn’t be a stretch to come up with a direct correlation to the decline in attendance and popularity of the sport. Is it really a surprise though?

The game was, by and large, considered the nation’s “national pastime” for many decades. That was eventually usurped by the emergence of the NFL and it’s popularity and appeal. Americans love their sports and if there is some grit mixed in with a little semblance of violence, all the better for some consumers.

I have loved baseball since I was a young boy. Sure, it is played with a subtle, slow and deliberate pace, but that’s fine by me. For me, it somewhat balances out my love of ice hockey with it’s speed and lightning pace of play.

Hockey features an absolute brand of toughness, and some would say it is a violent game in and of itself. But for those that may not have played, 99.9% of that is left on the ice at the end of a game. The physical condition and elevated intellect required to play places its participants at a special level. Respect for fellow players is very high.

For young sports fans, baseball just might not be on their radar as much as it may have been in the past. There are so many other things of interest to them now. That is exactly why the current malaise is of a major concern to me.

I would offer to both sides that you just might be at a crossroads, be sure to take the right path… PEACE