Waiting For Intelligent Life

Sometimes, it just takes a little longer. I get that the American government is struggling right now to come to terms with the cope of how bad this viral pandemic can be, but you would think that a league that has two confirmed cases of coronavirus would treat this pandemic with a little more seriousness. As the NHL clings to the faint hope that they'll be able to complete the 2019-20 season sometime before the calendar flips to 2021, they decided to postpone the 2020 NHL Draft, NHL Combine, and NHL Awards - events all scheduled to happen in June.

I respect the fact that all of these events attract crowds and there are infinite interactions between people at the events, but postponing the events is just another scheduling problem that can be solved by using the word "cancelled". I get that scouts and general managers eagerly anticipate seeing players do chin-ups, push-ups, and ride stationary bikes at the combine, but when you learn that some of the best players in the game today couldn't do a chin-up or had low aerobic fitness scores compared to their peers, it might be time to just let this one go for a year.

There have been all sorts of scenarios proposed for the NHL Draft Lottery thus far, but let's be honest in telling ourselves that the solution in 2005 seemed to work pretty well for all teams involved following the lockout. In 2005, first-round selections were determined by a weighted lottery with the teams picking in reverse order in the second round, and the draft continued to follow the "snake" pattern through to the seventh and final round.

In that draft, four teams had the best chance of picking first-overall based on the criteria that teams had not qualified for any of those playoffs and received no first-overall picks in that period. The four teams who received the best odds were the Buffalo Sabres, Columbus Blue Jackets, New York Rangers, Pittsburgh Penguins, and we know that the Penguins selected Sidney Crosby first-overall in 2005. There's no reason why the NHL can't do the same thing for this year's NHL Entry Draft if only there was someone who was in charge of the league when this all went down.

As for the NHL Awards, it can be done online since that's just a night where the NHL sells its soul to any advertiser who wants to dump money on the NHL's doorstep. Quite frankly, the summaries written up about the event are better than sitting through the whole night itself, so stream it for free on NHL.com, and be done with this whole debacle of postponing and rescheduling.

For one single, solitary season, there is nothing wrong with shutting the league down for the greater good. At some point, there has to be better decisions made in the NHL Office and in front offices of NHL teams when it comes to not promoting the gatherings of mass humanity in one small location. For everything that we're being told, keeping our social distances from others once this is over will help to prevent a second wave of the virus infecting people, and that's generally a good thing for the entire planet.

I don't know if we'll find it this year based on the decisions already made, but I'm hoping that, at some point, there might be some sort of sign of intelligent life at the NHL. One day, we might see executives who are smarter than the virus we're currently trying to curtail.

Until next time, keep your sticks on the ice!