Mark Madden: Vast uncertainty still exists for finishing NHL season

When it comes to the resumption of pro hockey, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman mostly told us what he doesn’t know.

Bettman doesn’t know when training camp starts: Not before July 1, and likely later.

Bettman doesn’t know when play resumes. Bettman doesn’t know where games will take place: Two host cities will be chosen from 10 being considered (including Pittsburgh).

Bettman doesn’t know if the first and second playoff rounds proper will be best-of-five or best-of-seven. Bettman doesn’t know if the tournament will be bracketed or reseeded.

Bettman doesn’t know when the 2020-21 season will start.

Bettman’s news conference Tuesday was like a conversation between Spicoli and Mr. Hand.

All that ambiguity makes it reasonable to think there’s vast uncertainty whether the NHL can finish this season at all, or start next season within a reasonable time frame.

Let’s say the NHL resumes the first week of August, which seems optimistic, and doesn’t wrap until mid-October.

Finishing this season should be a priority. Flushing it would be ill-advised after 80% of the regular season got completed. It wouldn’t be fair to those who invested, including players and fans.

Adding eight teams to the postseason is exceedingly fair. Only one team that was far removed from the playoff hunt (Montreal) has been included. The pandemic is ever-changing. Small windows should be targeted and utilized.

But the NHL’s sketchy grip on moving forward makes me wonder if it’s worth it. The NHL has none of the confidence and conviction of the NFL — which has a big advantage in that their usual timetable has not yet been skewed.

Maybe the NHL should wait for a vaccine, however long that takes.

But if financial solvency depends on finishing this season, then approach it with the corresponding urgency. This isn’t that.

This quote from deputy commissioner Bill Daly gives pause: “Our medical advisers (believe) that a single positive test, depending on the circumstance, should not necessarily shut the whole operation down.”

That’s good, because there’s going to be “a single positive test.” In fact, there figures to be several. So, does more than one “shut the whole operation down?”

To play through the pandemic, covid-19 has to be treated like an injury. A positive test means isolation and treatment for the afflicted, testing for those potentially exposed, and play on with those remaining. Short of the virus running rampant, there has to be a commitment to soldiering on.

But commitment seems lacking on any number of levels, to say nothing of certainty. To start and stop again is disaster.

Maybe the NHL just won’t risk bad optics. Those who want sports (or anything else) to resume are widely thought to be selfish and want people to die. Hence the tiptoeing.

The NFL doesn’t care about that. The NFL is talking about fans in stadiums this fall. The NHL won’t even speculate about attendance at next season’s games.

I’m also wondering how many players really want to resume. Hockey is a sport of routine. Summer is for vacation, not playoffs. Participation will be high because of the monetary aspects, but will hearts be in it, especially at first?

The hazard will be minimal. Well-conditioned young athletes are at low risk (we think). NHL workplaces will be among North America’s safest, and certainly less dangerous than an emergency room or even a supermarket check-out line.

It seems unlikely the virus will be transmitted on the ice. Players and officials will be tested many times before they get on the rink. The NHL plans on testing every player every night.

NHL owners will not cavalierly put assets in peril. Those are needed beyond this resumption.

The dumbest thing about the format is the top four teams in each conference playing a round robin to determine seeding for the first round proper. Boston got 100 points in 70 games. That’s eight points more than any other team in the Eastern Conference. But the Bruins could get the No. 4 seed if they have three bad games after a layoff of more than four months.

The prelim round should be best-of-three. The top four seeds should wait till those games finish. That round robin is quicksand and what’s most unfair about the format.