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The story of the 2020-21 National Hockey League season will be written in red ink, although the Canadiens might be in better shape than many of their rivals.
There’s no certainty over when the season will begin — Jan. 1 is the latest guess — and the idea of jamming a full 82-game schedule into four and a half months seems foolhardy and dangerous.
There’s also no certainty that there will be fans in the arenas and that’s a major problem for a league whose largest source of revenue is derived from ticket sales.
No NHL team is selling tickets these days because nobody knows how many fans, if any, will be allowed to attend games. The Canadiens are hoping that some fans will be able to attend games at the Bell Centre this winter and they have developed plans to welcome 4,000 fans, 10,000 fans and a full house of more than 21,000.
But all the scenarios, including playing in empty arenas, are dependent on Quebec turning the corner on its battle with COVID-19 and none of the recent numbers are encouraging.
