Kenny said: NHL hopes to finish the rest of the season. Although there are no fans watching the game, at least there can be TV broadcast.
Xinhua News Agency, Washington, May 8 (reporter Wang Jiying) according to local media reports on the 8th, although the new Crown pneumonia epidemic in the United States is still spreading, the North American Professional Hockey League (NHL) the league restart plan after the epidemic is under control is being discussed, including a variety of options such as “empty” playing and centralized holding of matches.
It is reported that the league and the players’ union have formed a joint committee, which has discussed many plans internally, among which the plan to restart the league in July has received the most attention. According to the idea of NHL, the stadium will be gradually opened in May, allowing players to resume training, and then some training camps and warm-up matches will be held in June. The regular season will be restarted in July until the end of the season in September, and game session will shrink. In addition, the competition is considered to be held in four cities where the epidemic is controlled. Facilities such as training venues and hotels should be very close to the competition venues, and fans are not allowed to watch the match on the spot.
At present, the plan is only at the level of internal discussion, without any decision. Everything can be implemented only after the epidemic is controlled and the restrictive measures of relevant government departments are over.
The home court of the oilmen team in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada is one of the venues considered by the NHL. According to the media, the president of NHL Bateman has had a preliminary communication with the Governor of Alberta Kenny to discuss the possibility of undertaking some events in Edmonton.
Kenny admitted that he was not sure whether the competition could be held. Kenny said: “The NHL hopes to finish the rest of the season. Although there are no fans watching the game, at least there can be TV broadcasts. We hope that NHL can formulate a very detailed plan to minimize risks. At present, we do not know whether we can assume such a role.”
Previously, Fuqi, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in the United States, who was called “Zhong Nanshan in the United States” by Chinese netizens, said that the premise for sports to return to normal in summer was to play games “on the empty ground, players are isolated and detected in a timely manner. Many sports people have said that games without fans have no soul, and American League basketball Los Angeles Lakers star James once said that the “empty field” game is boring, however, in the face of the epidemic that has not seen the inflection point for a long time and the economic situation that is also not optimistic, the “empty field” playing can at least exchange the benefits of TV broadcasting.
Mularoni, an expert at the Children’s Hospital affiliated to Johns Hopkins University in the United States, said that in theory, the competition could be restarted “empty”, but it needed 100% execution. Mularoni said: “As long as all athletes, coaches and staff serving the competition are isolated for 14 days, and then confirmed that they are not infected after virus testing, since then, these people have been isolated and played in a certain place, just like living in a vacuum environment and the virus is completely isolated, then it is entirely possible to achieve a safe competition.”
The NHL was shut down in March due to the outbreak of the epidemic, and nearly 200 games were not finished in 31 teams across the league. It is estimated that if the season is completely ruined, NHL will lose about 1 billion dollars (1 dollar is about 7 yuan) of income.