Return To Play: How Will NHL Look, Sound, and Feel Once They Come Back?

That scenario is a stripped-down version of what the NHL’s Return to Play Committee has begun envisioning for whenever the league returns from its COVID-19 imposed shutdown, which went into effect March 12. It’s a virtual guarantee that world health officials insist the resumptions of pro sports leagues begin with empty venues, and which will create some unprecedented conditions. Hockey games, for instance, will look and feel like practices or glorified shinny. How, then, will the players competing have to tweak their strategic approaches? And how will the games be presented to fans watching the broadcasts?

“Our mental model from the beginning is, we wanted the game and all the hockey rituals as players go to seem exactly as it would be for a regular game,” Becher said, “from when they come in through our loading dock, to their normal ritual of how they go to the locker room and what they touch. In our building we have the shark (mouth) they skate through, and we still need to do that.”