Feb 9: Finally, we have a schedule for the Canadian teams—at least part of one. The AHL has released the first few games for each of the five teams that will be operating north of the border. Belleville and Laval will kick things off on Friday, Manitoba and Toronto start on Monday, and the Stockton Heat, who are operating out of Calgary this season, begin on February 21.
Jan 22: Two weeks from now, the American Hockey League will start what it is still calling the 2020-21 season. On February 5, things will kick off with several games around the minor leagues even without a handful of teams that opted-out. League president Scott Howson released this statement today, along with the schedules of the Atlantic, North, Central and Pacific Divisions:
As we prepare for a season unlike any other in our 85-year history, our priorities are first and foremost health and safety. Our main objective is to provide a safe environment for our players to continue their development towards a career in the National Hockey League.
The schedule for the Canadian Division will not be released for now as the Belleville Senators continue to work with Ontario health officials.
This will be the 85th season in the AHL’s history and is certainly one of the more unique campaigns in recent memory. The league announced new geographic-based divisions earlier this year that will reduce travel but increase rivalry. Teams across the league will also not be playing the same amount of games. For instance, the Bridgeport Sound Tigers have only 24 games on their schedule, while the San Diego Gulls will play 44 times this season.
The schedule runs through May 14, just a few days after the NHL season is set to finish.
With uneven game schedule does this mean no playoffs?
@fffbbb – Well, after wasting precious minutes poking around AHL.com and a few random teams’ sites, only one has playoffs tentatively “scheduled” (roughly around May 18th). That said, many others had no playoffs mentioned in their schedules, so, maybe the AHL will playing by ear, too. With this much disparity in the number of games scheduled, it would seem the old points percentage fallback would be the only way to go, but it also wouldn’t surprise me if there were no playoffs. Guess we just have to wait and see..
And, with a tidbit picked up from interweb radio, maybe the playoffs part of the schedule is waiting on the Canadian AHL teams, who are still in limbo due to some pandemic crap circling the globe (still)…
Had a fan ask me this morning if last seasons records would be added to this seasons records for playoff placement.
I told him “sure,why not?”
I’m 25/75 that there will be no playoffs.