With the Coronavirus pandemic forcing the National Hockey League to make changes to their schedule, with that comes the changes at the American Hockey League level too. On May 11, 2020, the AHL’s former President and CEO David Andrews announced that the end of the 2019-20 campaign, including the Calder Cup Playoffs, would be canceled, and they were going to focus on preparing for the 2020-21 season. Now, there has been some new news. On October 28, 2020, the new President and CEO of the AHL, Scott Howson, announced that the tentative start date for the 2020-21 AHL season has been pushed back to Feb. 5, 2021. One of the big questions that people are asking about the AHL starting back up is exactly how it will work.

With the current increase in cases, there is constant monitoring of the guidelines in all 31 AHL cities, and decisions for how the season will run will be made in the future. For the time being, there is a strong chance that with the risk that the National Hockey League is taking in participating in a 2020-21 season, there will be an increase in the roster size from the current 23-man active roster that teams are allowed to have. No matter if it is in the form of extra players active, or as a “taxi squad” like Major League Baseball had this past year, it definitely affects how the 2020-21 AHL season will function as well.

What comes with the possibility of a “taxi squad” is the question of how teams can safely get their players from the American Hockey League to their current location, and a solution for that could be to have the NHL team’s season correlate with their AHL affiliate’s season. For instance, take the recently-discussed potential all-Canadian division for the 2020-21 NHL season. In this situation, the Vancouver Canucks could play the Calgary Flames, while the Utica Comets, Vancouver’s AHL affiliate, plays Calgary’s affiliate in the Stockton Heat. In the case of those two teams, they would also likely find a spot to play or practice near the NHL rinks, as both the Comets and Heat play in the United States, while the Canucks and Flames are in Canada. The same would have to occur for the Edmonton Oilers’ AHL affiliate, the Bakersfield Condors.

When it comes to the NHL’s 24 American teams, whose AHL teams all play in the states, it will be a little easier as they don’t have to cross country borders for what will be an unprecedented 2020-21 AHL season either way. For a team like the Bridgeport Sound Tigers, the American Hockey League affiliate of the New York Islanders, there is an easy answer. If the idea of keeping the AHL teams around their NHL clubs is what the end result is, when the Islanders are the home team, the Sound Tigers have the obvious option of playing at Northwell Health Ice Center. Northwell is a five-minute drive to Nassau Coliseum and the Long Island Marriott, where some NHL teams choose to stay when they come to play the Islanders.

The American Hockey League has set a date for when they expect the season to start, and unless there is a high uptick in cases and the precautions are massive enough that could affect the overarching possibility that there would not be a season, there would need to be serious measures put into place so that they are able to successfully play the season.

Photos courtesy of John McCreary/For Hearst Connecticut Media

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