Hi, this is Fred Wallace with ” Off the Wire “.
The Ontario Hockey League following meetings and conferences this week with the Board of Governors first and then the league’s 20 General Managers have revised their Return To Play plan.
If everything unfolds as visualized;
– Import players are to arrive at their respective clubs on January 8th for quarantine
– All Ontario/Canadian born players are to report on January 22nd
– OHL Training Camps will commence on January 23rd
– There will be 2 exhibition games for each squad between the start of Training camp & the opening of the season
– The official date for the regular season to commence is February 4.
– The 40 game regular season will run from February 4th-May 16th
– The Trade Deadline is April 8th
– only 8 teams will make the post season which begins May 19th and runs to June 14th
– Round 1 of the Playoffs is a best of 5
– Rounds 2 & 3 will be best of 7 series
– The OHL Priority Selection will be staged June 5th
While no schedule was in place following either session, the Owen Sound Attack expect to see a heavy dose of games against Guelph, Kitchener & London, their traditional divisional rivals.
However, games against Division rival Erie, Conference rival Sault Ste Marie and most of the Eastern Conference will be scarce, if any at all.
Will Owen Sound play Barrie more…or less ? And what about Mississauga, also 2 hours away ?
The Playoff format will certainly be 4 teams from the Eastern Conference and 4 from the Western Conference….BUT, will the Conferences be further broken down so 2 teams from each of the 4 divisions qualify ?
A lot of questions still remain.
And again, no matter what dates are projected by the Ontario Hockey League, the real answer lies in the hands of government and health officials.
I’m Fred Wallace