1 Columbus Blue Jackets News Clips June 23-24, 2020 Columbus Blue
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Columbus Blue Jackets News Clips June 23-24, 2020 Columbus Blue Jackets PAGE 02: Columbus Dispatch: Michael Arace | This week critical in NHL’s plan to restart PAGE 04: Columbus Dispatch: Columbus will not be hub city for NHL return PAGE 06: The Athletic: Columbus, Minnesota will not be hub cities when NHL season resumes PAGE 08: The Athletic: 20 years later, remembering the ‘bizarre’ Blue Jackets and Wild expansion draft PAGE 13: CBC.ca: Sudbury's Nick Foligno hopes charity hockey event will lift peoples' spirits Cleveland Monsters/Prospects NHL/Websites PAGE 15: The Athletic: LeBrun: What’s next after NHL narrows focus in hub city selection process PAGE 17: The Athletic: Custance: How NHL teams are managing draft preparation right now PAGE 21: The Athletic: Down Goes Brown: The chaos lover’s rooting guide to the playoffs and lottery PAGE 27: TSN.ca: Making eight cases for the Hockey Hall of Fame PAGE 32: Washington Post: The return of sports anytime soon seems somewhere between unlikely and irresponsible PAGE 35: NY Post: Fauci says second coronavirus wave can’t cancel World Series, sports PAGE 36: USA Today: Opinion: Sports stayed silent as COVID-19's next wave got closer. Now comes the reckoning PAGE 39: The Athletic: Anonymous ‘player’ poll: NHL mascots dish on each other, pants and more PAGE 45: The Athletic: Pronman: Top 31 NHL Draft prospects of the past five years, 2020 edition PAGE 50: The Athletic: By the numbers: The best draft picks of the salary cap era PAGE 55: Sportsnet.ca: How the NHL Draft Lottery has changed over the years PAGE 58: Orlando Sentinel: If you want sports back, wear a mask | Commentary PAGE 60: Pennlive.com: Sports and entertainment venues struggle with COVID-19 reopening guidelines: ’Green does not mean go’ 1 Columbus Dispatch / Michael Arace | This week critical in NHL’s plan to restart By Michael Arace – June 23, 2020 The NHL and the NHL Players Association this week are skating into the hard areas, as Ken Hitchcock used to say. If the league sticks to its plan to open training camps July 10, it has two major pieces of business to complete this week: finish hammering out a collective bargaining agreement extension, or a Memo of Understanding, with the union; and choose the two "hub" cities for its 24-team playoff tournament, which is thumbnailed to begin July 30. Columbus was among the 10 cities under consideration to be a hub, the league announced July 5. Monday morning, The Dispatch learned the city didn’t make the cut. No hub here. On one hand, it would have been a grand thing to host 12 teams on one side of the draw even without fans in the stands in a made-for-TV event. Jackets and city officials made a good pitch for it. Columbus has two major-league rinks, a host of practice facilities and a footprint that lends to easy management. The league had good experiences here with the draft in 2007 and the All-Star Game in 2015. It knows that Columbus knows how to do this stuff. On the other hand, it’s likely that one or more persons, be they players or support personnel, will be diagnosed with COVID-19 during the tournament. It may be inevitable. Who knows what happens then? Maybe it is better to un-hub than to hub. Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic last week reported that the league had cut the field to six cities. Meanwhile, the Canadian government announced it will make an exception and allow NHL personnel into the country without imposing a 14-day quarantine. Which means Toronto, Vancouver and Edmonton are still in play. Las Vegas has been considered a virtual lock for one hub, in part because it has a surfeit of luxury hotel rooms and amenities that are easily bubbled. Yet, according to a league source, there is emerging momentum toward using two Canadian cities as hubs. Confirmed cases of COVID-19, and deaths from the disease, are drastically fewer north of the border. Vancouver and Edmonton, in particular, have relatively few cases especially when compared to Chicago, which has some of the highest numbers in the U.S. "It’s too bad Columbus wasn’t picked, because everyone knows they would have made a great job of it," Jackets captain Nick Foligno said. "Really, I don’t think players care where we play so long as it’s safe. I think the league gets that." The league hopes that it and the NHLPA will have all the details for a return-to-play agreement by the end of the week. Foligno is one of the 12 members of the union’s negotiating committee. Their job is not an easy one. They have to hash out safety protocols and other details of life in the hub bubbles. Reportedly, they want to be sure that concerned players have an available opt-out clause. They also have to come to a consensus on a number of CBA-related issues, not the least of which is how to structure future escrow payments. The players are on the hook for 50% of all hockey-related losses which will be north of $1 billion if the season cannot be completed. 2 Our old pal Hitchcock, by the way, is eligible for induction to the Hockey Hall of Fame in the "builder" category. The selection committee is meeting via video conference Tuesday and Wednesday. It has plans to announce the class of 2020 Wednesday. Hitch has a shot. Hitchcock won a Stanley Cup with the Dallas Stars in 1999, after he ruined the game with his obstructive "defense." (Long-running joke here.) He is third all-time in coaching victories behind Scotty Bowman and Joel Quenneville. His greatest coaching job might’ve been done in Columbus, in 2008-09, when he dragged the Jackets into the playoffs for the first time in franchise history. It’s going to be a fine Hall of Fame class. Among the player candidates are Jarome Iginla, Marian Hossa, Alexander Mogilny, Boris Mikhailov, Daniel Alfredsson, Jeremy Roenick, Rod Brind’Amour, Jennifer Botterill, Maria Rooth, Kim St. Pierre, Karyn Bye-Dietz and Julie Chu. Iginla is the only lock. 3 Columbus Dispatch / Columbus will not be hub city for NHL return By Brian Hedger – June 23, 2020 If the NHL is able to finish its 2019-20 season, Columbus will not be hosting any games as one of the league’s two "hub" cities. The Dispatch first learned of the city’s elimination from the field of 10 finalists Monday morning, and the news was later confirmed by both Blue Jackets general manager Jarmo Kekalainen and Linda Logan, the executive director of the Greater Columbus Sports Commission. "(It’s disappointing), but there’s a lot of positives and we got a lot of compliments about our case," said Kekalainen, who was informed of the decision Monday morning. "It’s just that two teams get selected, two cities, and we weren’t among them. It’s great that we made it to the final stage of the selection process and we’ll take the positive with the disappointment and move on." The bid was a collaborative effort that included the Blue Jackets, the sports commission, the city of Columbus, Franklin County and other entities. "We’re disappointed, but we have a new appreciation for all the elements the NHL has had to consider," Logan said. "This wasn’t a traditional process and we certainly learned a lot by going through it. I want to give a big ‘thank you’ to the city, the county and the health department for working so hard to keep Ohio in consideration." The Blue Jackets might not have played in Columbus even if their home city had been picked as a hub. The NHL has said it wants to eliminate home-ice advantage, even with the likelihood fans will be barred from watching games live, so teams whose markets are chosen as hubs may play elsewhere starting out. Regardless, being picked as a hub would have been a nice feather for Columbus to put in its cap. "Columbus as a city has certainly gained in stature," Logan said. "It would have been great (to host), but I understand the complexity of the situation." Hotel space might have been a key factor in Columbus not being selected, particularly after the NHL opted to use two hub cities rather than four to host its 24-team return plan. The issue would’ve been fitting 12 NHL teams into one hotel, which the league would likely prefer in a quarantine situation to contain players, staff and others inside a "bubble" to guard against COVID-19 spread. A report this past weekend by The Athletic’s Pierre Lebrun said the league pared its final field down to six cities, which included Las Vegas, Vancouver, Edmonton and Toronto. According to the league's timeline, a decision on which cities will become the NHL's hubs is expected this week. The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported last week that officials and hotels there were preparing to host NHL games as one of the league’s hubs, while Vancouver and Edmonton are believed to be making headway in their bids to host. Both Canadian cities have relatively low rates of COVID-19 infection and have shown a steady decrease since the first week of May. Last month, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said infection rates would be a significant factor in choosing its hub locations and was the main reason they weren’t announced at the same time the league rolled out its 24-team format.