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NHL postpones Combine, Awards, and Draft
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Photo credit: © Anne-Marie Sorvin-USA TODAY Sports
Cam Lewis
Mar 25, 2020, 17:59 EDTUpdated: Mar 25, 2020, 18:03 EDT
The NHL’s wave of postponing key events continued today, with the league announcing that the Scouting Combine, Awards Ceremony, and Draft will all be moved to a later date due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Now, this isn’t necessarily bad news. What it shows is that the league could very well be planning to shove the entire 2019-20 season, including all of these events, back to a later timeline. If the playoffs were to happen in July, the draft and awards and everything else would also inevitably need to be pushed back. So this happening is all just a part of the NHL adjusting to everything being delayed.
At this point, though, it’s still completely up in the air as to whether anything related to the 2019-20 season will actually happen. I think we all know the regular season will be nixed, but it’s clear the league and the players want to get some kind of playoffs in and they want a Stanley Cup champion to be awarded. If the playoffs do end up going forward in the summer, we’ll see events like the draft and awards happen possibly as late as September, along with the free agency period ahead of 2020-21.
Everything is up in the air right now.