NHL Pauses Season Until After Christmas; Players Won’t Participate in Olympics

With over 15% of the league’s players in Covid protocol, and a total of 50 games postponed through December 21st, the NHL decided to pause its season beginning the 22nd until after Christmas. The league takes a few days off around the holiday anyway (unlike the NBA, which plays a lot of games on Christmas Day), so it will take the break a little earlier than planned. Eleven teams had already shut down operations early, so now the whole league is following.

With a lot of make up games on the horizon due to Covid (and who knows how many more will be added) the NHL informed the Players Association that it is pulling out of the Olympics, scheduled to begin February 4th in Beijing. Instead, it will use the gap in the schedule that would have been used for the Olympics to reschedule the postponed games. The Olympic roster will probably include some former NHL players who are playing in other countries or North American minor leagues and possibly some college players.