NHL’s 24-team Return to Play proposal

[Dappleganger]

Here's my recommendation. Same amount of "rounds" as the 24 team proposal. Re-seed after each round.

If the games are neutral site, travel/geography isn't a concern. 

[Frycer14]

This is stupid. Not just the format, but the notion that they should play out the season at all.

Right. It's asterisk'd to hell and contingent on so many unknowables. Figure out the next season.

So can I assume that both of you will make a conscious decision not to watch?

I feel like "Will you watch it" is kind of an unfair standard right now. I'm watching German soccer and Danish political dramas these days. My bar isn't high.

Thanks to John Oliver, I watched an hour of marble racing yesterday.

[OldTimeHockey]

I didn't say anything about struggling small business owners.

What I don't see the difference between is places like Walmart, Costco, etc; and what they've done to continue making money and what the NHL is trying to do.

You asked why anyone would expect these teams to behave differently than other "businesses". And the answer to that is that most businesses need to be open to survive. Most aren't owned privately by outrageously wealthy people.

Or, in some cases, like Walmart's and Cost-cos. They sell things like, you know, food and diapers and stuff. The NHL, love it though I do, is fairly superfluous right now and maybe not worth the health risk.

Like I said, I'm not a fan of the suggestion, but I can understand why a business would want to recover some lost revenue.

Like I said though, I'm not sure what extra revenue you see in a few teams playing a handful of games with no fans in a neutral site.

Again, I'm not saying that I agree with them doing it. All I said is I'm not shocked they are trying to do it. Whether a business sells, diapers, food, entertainment, socks, or flowers, their goal, as a business, is to make money. Whether they need the money or not to survive, is irrelevant. These "outrageously wealthy people" didn't become that way by allowing opportunities to make money pass them by.

We can question the ethics of the decision all we want, but we can't be surprised that 'outrageously wealthy people" are making decisions based on dollars and cents and not on the overall wellbeing of the population or for that matter, their employees.

[herman]

This is stupid. Not just the format, but the notion that they should play out the season at all.

Right. It's asterisk'd to hell and contingent on so many unknowables. Figure out the next season.

So can I assume that both of you will make a conscious decision not to watch?

I feel like "Will you watch it" is kind of an unfair standard right now. I'm watching German soccer and Danish political dramas these days. My bar isn't high.

Thanks to John Oliver, I watched an hour of marble racing yesterday.

I thought I posted marble racing here a couple of months month ago.

[disco]

So it seems they're scrapping the last 10+ games of the regular season and going for a 5-round playoffs (for teams 9-24). I think teams 9-16, the NHL's middle-class, get the short end here. 1-8 have to play the usual 4 rounds to win the Stanley Cup, 17-24 are just blessed with a shot, but 9-16 have to win a best-of-5 against a traditionally non-playoff team immediately or they're sent home right away. To win a cup for them they would essentially to win FIVE must-win rounds.

And in terms of legitimacy I'll say this: once the 2-month, 5-round playoff grind gets underway, ending with a team hoisting Lord Stanley, I'm sure the teams will definitely feel it irregardless of whether others do. As much of an asterisk as the 48-game season in 2014. They've already put 85% of the regular season work in. Much more than that season.

[Nik Bethune]

We can question the ethics of the decision all we want, but we can't be surprised that 'outrageously wealthy people" are making decisions based on dollars and cents and not on the overall wellbeing of the population or for that matter, their employees.

Well, I think that's just demonstrably not the case. There pretty clearly are some people who are surprised by the capitalist classes and their complete disregard for human safety vs. the accumulation of unnecessary wealth.
Now, if you want to say people shouldn't be surprised by that given the inherently exploitative nature of capitalism and particularly the greed on display in our late stage capitalism then I am 100% with you comrade and I think that's why you're seeing growing popular support for actual measures to address the balance of power in our society and redistribute wealth away from the bosses.