Jets coach Paul Maurice sees upside to NHL season time out: Healthy playoff hockey

There have actually been unmatched actions in the sports world to the unmatched circumstance it’s currently experiencing. Hockey has actually been no exception.

As the coronavirus pandemic continued to intensify in The United States and Canada, numerous small and junior leagues canceled the rest of their seasons, consisting of playoffs, and the NHL paused its routine season March12 With teams still having 11 to 14 games left on their schedules, the league has actually offered no sign as to how it will manage things moving forward.

MORE: How the coronavirus has actually impacted the hockey landscape

There is one unmatched event that NHL fans may end up valuing when this is all over. If the season resumes in time for the 2020 Stanley Cup Final to occur– which’s still a big if– we might be seeing healthy playoff hockey for the first time.

Winnipeg Jets coach Paul Maurice mentioned the possibility Thursday in a video interview posted on the team’s Twitter account.

“The positive upside of this is that when the pause is over, you’re going to get an opportunity to see something that you’ve never seen, and that’s healthy playoff hockey,” he stated. “In my roster at the end of the game of injuries, you have somewhere between eight and 13 guys that played that night that are dealing with something.”

Those numbers aren’t precisely a surprise. Playing through injury has actually constantly belonged of the game, and the playoffs frequently end up being a fight of attrition. A lot of players aren’t even close to 100 percent that late in the season, however all the best persuading them to remain off the ice with a lot on the line.

It’s something that’s simple to forget offered how underreported injuries tend to remain in the NHL, and it raises the concern of simply how various the playoffs would look with teams that have actually had time to rest and recuperate.

It would absolutely enable teams to be much closer to full strength than they generally are at the start of the postseason. Depending upon what the schedule winds up being this year, even stars like the Lightning’s Steven Stamkos and the Rangers’ Chris Kreider might return in time for the postseason, to state absolutely nothing of the lots of other leading players whose injuries have not been madepublic Fans desire to see the very best players on the ice, not on the sidelines, which’s something the season time out might remarkably wind up assisting to supply.

MORE: NHL supposedly thinking about 24-team playoff format

While you ‘d anticipate full- strength teams to play much better hockey, there’s likewise the matter of rust collected after numerous weeks far from the rink, however Maurice does not see that being a concern.

“It won’t take these guys long to get their focus back,” he stated. “I think they’re pretty darn good now at keeping their conditioning right. I don’t think anybody is taking time off, they’re going to stay very, very fit, so I’m not sure when it’s going to be but when we do come back you’re going to see healthy, fit and very intense hockey.”

Obviously, whatever still depends upon whether the NHL chooses to resume play thisseason Hockey still looks a long method far from returning, however we might be dealt with to rather the phenomenon if it does.

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