QMJHL prepares contingency plan amidst pause
The Quebec Major Junior Hockey League is looking to Return to Play one way or another this season.
Following Monday’s announcement of an extended holiday break that will pause play for December, the regional league followed up with a two-pronged plan on how it will retake to the ice in the new year.
The ideal option, should the effects of the pandemic subside enough to satisfy the league and public health authorities in the four provinces in which the QMJHL operates, would see the league continue with its original schedule resuming January 6 which allows for its 18 teams to travel from city to city.
“If the pandemic situation has settled down and public health authorities from the four provinces agree with our Return to Play protocol, our teams are going to continue to play on a regular basis with travel between cities,” said QMJHL Commissioner Gilles Courteau. “But if the pandemic is still a situation where we have red zones and some specific areas in the Maritimes where teams will not be able to travel, we will go with a protected environment event, subject to approval from Public Health officials.”
The commissioner laid out a plan that would see six protected environments including four Quebec-based venues and another two in the Maritimes staged from January 22 to 24. Three teams would play two games each in the three-day span, then boosted to three groups of four teams in Quebec playing six games over nine days scheduled from January 30 to February 7. Additionally, the six Maritimes teams would play five games from January 30 to February 6.
The QMJHL is confident that it can replicate the success of its recent protected environment event held in Quebec City that saw seven teams complete six games each over a 12-day span and allowed many teams to get up to speed with most now having played at least a dozen games this year.
“When we made the decision (in the summer) about resuming play, the message to our owners was that we were going to go through some roadblocks throughout the season,” Courteau added. “We have faced some specific issues, but I think what happened over the last two weeks in Quebec City has been a real boost for our teams and gives us faith that when we sit down with the four provinces’ public health departments that we have a good plan. We were successful in Quebec City and we are expecting the same.”
QMJHL teams will submit bids to serve as host of a protected environment in the coming weeks. If selected, players will head to those cities and then complete a required quarantine period that will then allow the league to resume play toward the latter half of January.
“We have established guidelines where teams will be able to apply to get one of those events if at the return from the Christmas break we are not able to return to play under normal situations,” Courteau said. “Each protected environment is conditional to the evolution of the pandemic. As an example, after our first weekend if our situation improves with the pandemic, we will go back to our regular season as normal. Teams will be allowed to travel and we will go from there, but if not we will be ready to move on with our regular season schedule with protected environments.
“If at the end of January or early February we go back to a certain normality and our teams are permitted to travel from one city to another as they have been doing the last couple of weeks in the Maritimes and back to mid-October with our Quebec-based teams, everybody is going to be happy. But if not, if we still have some restrictions, we are prepared to go forward with our protected environment.”