Front Burner - The NHL returns, exclusively in Canada

Episode Date: July 29, 2020

There are daily COVID-19 tests, no fans and no going home. For the 24 NHL teams in Toronto and Edmonton, however, the prize for spending two months in a “bubble” could be the Stanley Cup. Last night, the NHL played its first exhibition games since pausing the season in March. It also showed fans how the sport will be different in the league’s hub cities. Today on Front Burner, The Athletic senior writer Dan Robson tells us about what’s changed, what life is like in these hub cities, and whether the playoffs are actually safe from COVID-19.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. So I'm standing in Exhibition Place. It's around the corner from where I live. And it looks a little bit different here than it normally does.

There's a long black fence cordoning off a huge chunk of this area. And I'm standing next to a gate that has the NHL logos plastered on it. In front of the gate, there are a number of security guards. And to get to that gate, a car has to zigzag around a series of barriers. So they can't just ram right on it. In front of the gate there are a number of security guards and to get to that gate a car has to zigzag around a series of barriers so they can't just ram right through it. This fence is a thin line between the city I live in and this new hockey city. It's one of two isolated bubbles that will be hosting the games. A couple of them happened last night, two right here in Toronto, and then a third one in Edmonton, which is where the other bubble is.

COVID is still a very real threat to the games, but the NHL hopes that this bubble, these fences will keep COVID out and will reduce the health risks. Dan Robson is going to be joining me today. He's a senior writer with The Athletic. He's going to be in Edmonton when the real games start on Saturday. But today, he'll give us an inside view on how the league brought hockey back. This is FrontBurner.

Hi, Dan. Welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. So, I mean, before we start, I just want to be transparent here. You are married to the show's usual host, Jamie Poisson, and congrats on your new baby. Are you guys getting any sleep? We're getting a bit of sleep. It was a little bit tough the first couple of weeks. I mean, Jamie might say otherwise. She'll probably get mad at me.

She's actually getting less sleep than I am. She's been up with him through the night while I've been working. So she's been wonderful at that. So she's taken to being a mother incredibly well. I know she's enjoying herself. Well, you will be leaving your family for a little bit to head over to Edmonton on Friday. I've been looking over at the Toronto bubble just from the outside. It's pretty close to my house.

I want to understand the scale of these hockey cities that they're creating from the inside. Just how much is included in the bubble in Toronto and in Edmonton? Yeah, so in Toronto, you've got two hotels, the Royal York, which is right downtown across from Scotiabank Arena. And you've also got Hotel X, which is on the grounds of BMO Field. I mean, Hotel X, they've got nine full acres that

they're going to be utilizing that players will have access to the rooftop pool, massive, fabulous, like 6000 square feet, they're gonna have a massive cinema, all this kind of stuff inside this bubble. But essentially, they're creating a hockey village, which you could sort of think of as an Olympic village. I think we're sort of familiar with that terminology. It's going to be really interesting to see how that plays out, because while they have access to all this sort of top notch facilities and entertainment and everything, they still are confined and aren't able to sort of reenter the general population at all. Well, and the players have been there now for a couple days. What have you been hearing about life inside this village? Well, it sounds like it's going well so far. One of the things that was quite interesting and what I've heard is that the players are taking social distancing quite seriously. There's still a lot of mask usage. I mean, inside, I mean,

they've talked about doing everything from obviously playing cards to there's still a lot of mask usage and inside i mean they've talked about um doing everything from obviously playing cards to there's like a new wi-fi channel that's coming into it looks like at the royal york where players be able to play more and more video games so and then one of our colleagues did a story in which she went into uh the royal york and was at the front desk sort of checking in it was just to see what things were like and as she was standing there a shipment of pink whitney vodka showed up which is sort of like you know that as a former hockey player's brand and you could tell that while there's going to be very serious hockey being played there's also going to be a good time happening behind the scenes it's a real nice treat yesterday when we walked into our rooms and uh had pictures of of the family um you know we've we've all made

uh you know sacrifices to obviously be here and be away from families. It's nice to have that reminder of them every day. So far, so good. Food's been good for us. I don't know. Hotel's good. I'm happy with everything that's gone on so far

and starting to feel like home, like Joe said. It's interesting, you know, with having all the players staying in the same hotels, you know, eating at the same restaurants, I imagine there's a lot of potential for awkward interactions. I mean, you might be stuck in an elevator with a guy who, you know, cross-checked you the night before. Well, I'm really looking forward to the oral history of life inside the bubble when it comes to all these players. You know, especially when you're in the heat of a series, and I think we have to remember that beyond this first qualifying round,

players are going to be in the middle of a very heated series against another team. And I'm sure for the most part, they'll be able to stay isolated. And for the most part, we'll hear sort of funny stories about how they got along. But, you know, some elevator rides might be awkward. I'm curious to know how we ended up, the NHL host this in Toronto and in Edmonton.

What was behind the decision to create these two bubbles in Canada? Well, I spoke with Gary Bettman, the commissioner about this, actually, and he was saying if the NHL was going to be able to come back, it had to be in a hub city or bubble style format. I want to make clear that the health and safety of our players, coaches, essential support staff in our communities are paramount. While nothing is without risk, ensuring health and safety has been central to all of our planning so far and will remain so. has been central to all of our planning so far, and will remain so. For a long time, there were sort of different cities that were officially being discussed and had sort of put themselves forward.

Most recently, before they got to Toronto and Edmonton, Las Vegas was a big, big forerunner. All the players were quite excited about that. It seemed like this was something that would make a great idea. It's built a city built with hotels, and it's got all the amenities you could possibly imagine. But as the reality of the pandemic continued to increase, especially in the United States, and we've seen this continued persistent rise in COVID cases there, I think what happened in is that Canada became more and more of a appealing place because there's going to be some

people that are outside of the bubble coming in. They want to make sure that within those communities, there's the least amount of risk possible so the players were involved in this decision as well with the nhl um toronto was selected edmonton was selected after much discussions with the federal governments and the provincial and regional governments local health authorities say player safety is top of mind and plan to do regular COVID tests. We are having conversations with the NHL and the local Oilers group about how test results are going to be reported and that of course is another metric to follow closely. And what kind of other precautions are they taking to make sure that that COVID doesn't enter or spread through these bubbles? Well there's going to be constant testing for people

coming in, also amongst all the players as well. So there's daily testing with everybody inside of the bubble. So in that process, they're going to be basically saying, like, at the minute there's a positive test, that person's going to be isolated. They're going to try and keep things going. And they'll be implementing things like plexiglass and that kind

of stuff to make sure that they've completely sort of blocked off as much access to the outside world as they can. And then as well, this bubble is just being incredibly, very strictly enforced. For example, media are usually allowed to interact with players in the locker room. We're not going to be able to do any of that because they basically locked the bubble down to the people that they, the NHL and the NHLPA believe absolutely need to be there only. I'm curious to know more about how we got to this moment. I mean, it was back in March when the NHL put a pause on the season.

It was a month away from the playoffs starting. in March when the NHL put a pause on the season. It was a month away from the playoffs starting. First of all, why was it so important for them to relaunch the season? Well, I think that you can look at all of the rosy arguments, like it's great for fans and it's great for our collective happiness that hockey's back. But I mean, the reality is there's a lot of money at play here and for both the players and for the league there's not a lot of room to in their business model to not have these games playing so if we look ahead you know for the foreseeable future there's not going to be fans in arenas i mean there's going to be a revenue hit especially

with the nhl this is a largely a gate driven league they depend a lot on fans being in the stands in this process of trying to figure out how they're going to get back there was a lot of um you know just a mutual understanding that this was in their best interest at the same time there was a lot of pushback from it sort of was described as a vocal minority of hockey players that were concerned for the same reasons you or I would be concerned. And these are people with young families. These are people with, you know, people in their lives who are susceptible to this being a very deadly disease if they were to catch it. So, I mean, I think that all of those factors, which I think we tend to forget about when we're

looking at professional athletes, are very real anxieties. So one of the things that was key very early on was that each player would have an opt-out, that they could say, I don't want to be part of this return to play, and there would be no ramifications for that. We heard last week how the MLB and its players union fought really bitterly over baseball's return. It sounds like the tenor of these talks was different. It's interesting. I've spoken with both Gary Bettman and Don Fair, the head of executive director of the NHLPA, who are two men who obviously can continually disagree with each other professionally at their job. And they argue all the time.

continually disagree with each other professionally at their job and they argue all the time. Hockey fans nervously watching for any word considering a labor dispute between the league and the players. Right now it seems like two sides are pretty far apart. I had hoped that the approaches we've taken today would put us within range. So far apparently it's not true. Throughout this process, especially in March and April, they were on the phone several times a day from the very beginning. They both sort of kind of joke about like how they it was sort of like they were in a boat with two paddles. There's an island at one end and they have to get to the island and there's a storm coming. They have to get through it. And so they realize that it's within both of their interests to get that boat to that island. They both need to get there. I want to thank Executive Director Don Feer

and all members of the NHL Players Association. It took a great deal of collaborative effort to get where we are today. What was your reaction to hearing and negotiating this with Gary Bettman on where you landed? I think I could put it this way. We both understand, as do all the players, and I assume all the owners, that we're in a situation in which the larger scale events are much more significant than the ones we're dealing with. Well, it seems like the two of them have arrived at an island of some kind. I'm curious to know more about the structure of the tournament now. Obviously, the point is to give the Stanley Cup to a winning team.

But how are the rounds of hockey going to play out in this relaunch? So the makeup for all of the remaining games that they were unable to play because of the pandemic, they've come up with this concept of a qualifying round. And what that is essentially is an opportunity for teams that were on the bubble of making it into the Stanley Cup playoffs to have a series against another team to decide whether or not they'll move on. So the winner of that series will move on to the first round of the playoffs. they'll move on. So the winner of that series will move on to the first round of the playoffs.

The teams that were the best, they will get to play a round robin, which will basically then re-rank them and give them sort of a position of first, second, third when it comes to the first round of the playoffs. So basically, once we're past this qualifying stage, we then enter into a playoffs that'll look pretty similar to playoffs in the past.

Yes. So by October 4th, the Stanley Cup, as they've said, you know, COVID-willing, will be rewarded. A unique situation like this, you know, you're going from not playing to playing playoff hockey or style hockey. So you've got to embrace the grind mentally, physically. The past four months, I've been waiting for kind of this moment, what it was going to be like, and now that it's here,

now we're just getting back to, we're here for a reason. I'll see you next time. Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years. I've talked to millions of people and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. Well, I just said that it's going to look the same as playoffs in the past, but it's really not going to look the same. Fans are going to be, you know, sitting down to watch these games in front of a TV. They're not

going to be in the stands. Tell me more about how the games are actually going to look from a broadcast perspective. You know, it's really interesting because the stands are going to be, you know, covered with screens and different banners so that you don't really see the emptiness, which I think is quite jarring. So they're going to do their best to hide that. They're also going to be having 12 new cameras and some different angles. So they're going to try and show you the game

from a bit of a different perspective. Because part of the advantage of not having fans in the crowds is that they have more room to move around. The other thing is that the announcers are going to more room to move around um the other thing is that you know the the announcers are going to have to tell the story of the game in a different way i feel like i'm in a dunk tank is what i feel like at an amusement park and i don't want you throwing any balls to see if you can sink me um no i won't do it is different yeah i mean i've got glass over me i've got glass to the sides one thing is is certain, I feel awfully safe.

I talked with Chris Huthbert, a very well-known Canadian broadcaster who just joined SportsCenter and will be doing the broadcast in Edmonton. And he was talking about it sounding a little bit more like what Foster Hewitt sounded like on the radio years ago. So that kind of thing we grew up on or past generations grew up on.

Here's a breakaway. Goldham going right in. He's right in. He shoots. He scores. Goldham scored for the Maple Leafs. Going right down. I'm sitting around a radio listening to the game with sounds of the game in the background,

but mostly sounds of players and sounds of sticks. The sound of it will be really interesting. It sounds like they're considering experimenting with crowd noises. They're talking about micing the refs and the players. Yeah, a little bit more raw. One of the things they've also made sure to mention is that there's going to be a five-second delay to make sure they don't catch some of the language that you might not want broadcast to children, for example, listening to the game or watching the game at home.

But hearing a little bit more of that might actually give us a new perspective on the action. Well, and the NHL has acknowledged that they're going to be experimenting here. be experimenting here. I mean, what we hear in the first couple weeks, and what we see in the first couple weeks of this relaunch might be really different from where things land, you know, closer to the beginning of October. That's key, actually, I spoke with Rob Cortez, the head of NHL production at Sportsnet, and so the top boss there, and he was talking about how they've looked at all the different examples of what's been happening around the world with sports coming back and what different broadcasters have used and utilized. And they're basically coming into this with a toolbox of different ideas that they can implement and try. So right now, as we get ready for the official game one on August 1st on Saturday coming up, they're trying different things.

game one on august 1st on saturday coming up they're they're trying different things they're trying different angles trying different cameras and all kinds of things and and different sounds and i think that'll be interesting for viewers to be paying attention to because that's part of their plan they're not going into this um saying we know exactly what we're doing we're going to do everything the exact same way throughout they're also figuring things out as they go well bush what do you think of the atmosphere? The league has done an outstanding job. Phenomenal. I mean, it's different without fans.

There's no doubt about it. It's a different feel, but the amount of work that the NHL put in in such a short amount of time, it feels like an event. So, I mean, so interesting. The arena is going to be empty. The broadcast is going to look different. It's going to sound different. The schedule is really condensed.

Do you think it's going to feel like playoff hockey? I believe so. I mean, I think that especially in the Stanley Cup playoffs where, you know, these are seven-game series and they tend to get very heated and that action isn't going to be muted at all so while we're not going to necessarily see the you know the fans throwing beer in the air and cheering and slamming on the glass i i think that that sort of narrowed focus on the game will with time begin to normalize and the the qualifying round is going to be a little weird for people but I'm optimistic that as things go on if they're able to go on people are going to sort of settle in and just be happy to watch some hockey again.

I was a little skeptical about the whole process before this all started how was it going to work how can they prepare this didn't seem like they had much time, much notice. The bubble cities weren't picked until, you know, it felt like last minute, but I'm actually pleasantly surprised. You know, we're going out there to play hockey. You know, of course, everybody will miss the fans. They're a huge part of this sport, but, you know, we got to look past that right now, and we know that we got the support. We're excited to get started and, you know, show what we got.

You know, we saw the Major League Baseball season, you know, only started a week ago. And it's already under threat that the Marlins, you know, already had over a dozen players test positive for COVID. So the Marlins schedule has now been postponed through Sunday. So the earliest we would see them is Monday. Also, their home and home series between the Phillies and the Yankees, that has also been postponed. If baseball's return has already been interrupted by the virus, why should we think the NHL is going to be any different? You know, I think we should be somewhat skeptical and we should be paying attention to what players are in the lineup and what we're hearing because, you know, the reality is that this isn't going to be perfect. And this is a virus that we still are learning a

lot about. I think that the one thing that you can look at between the two is say that the lack of travel that is involved, the fact that going into the bubble, the recent round of tests that all the players did from July 18th to July 25th had no new positive tests out of over 4,000 tests administered. So the precautions so far have worked. And I think that that is a sign for some optimism. I think that fans can look at it and say, you know what, I think they've done,

you know, they've looked at best practices and this is probably going to be the best thing. It'll be different than what's happening in the MLB in which players are able to actually leave their hotels and go around different parts of the city and get on a plane and fly somewhere. I mean, it's obvious where the holes were in that plan. It remains to be seen where the holes are in this bubble, but hopefully they don't emerge. I'm wondering what you're hearing from the team and from the league in terms of how confident they are that they're actually going to be handing out the cup this year.

It's interesting. I've been chatting with officials from the NHLPA and the NHL and, you know, everything was so uncertain and still remains uncertain. And the one thing that every discussion I have continues to include is sort of this asterisk of if we're able to get to the Stanley Cup final, you know, God willing, if we get there. I think that there's a real understanding that there's only so much that can be controlled. There's always going to be a concern that something might happen. Dan, thanks so much for your insight into this. Yeah, no problem. Thanks very much. Before I let you go today, an update on the WE Charity contract controversy.

Yesterday afternoon, the House Finance Committee convened via video conference to question the co-founders of WE Charity, Mark and Craig Kilburger. For about four hours, the brothers took questions about WE Charity's relationship with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Finance Minister Bill Morneau, and their families. They were asked about WE's internal structure and policies, and how the non-profit came to be selected to administer the Liberal government's $900 million student grant program, an arrangement that has since been cancelled. The Kilburgers said multiple times that they felt their organization had been misrepresented in recent weeks.

At one point, they were asked by a liberal MP to outline what they believed to be the worst misconceptions about their organization. Craig Kilburger responded. The We Charity Foundation was to solve a need the government asked us to solve. We were not in financial dire straits because we made difficult choices. Me Too We Social Enterprise has been incredibly misrepresented in this process and exists solely to support the charity with 100% of its profits, 100% every penny, going to the charity and creating jobs. The main reason it exists is creating jobs for at-risk women around the world. I would say that the list continues, but fundamentally it's this. We did this to be of service to the government, not for the government to help us.

And it is incredibly unfortunate, the fallout that has occurred. But the tone in exchanges with opposition MPs was at times combative. You can hear it in this testy back and forth from the end of the afternoon between Conservative MP Pierre Poliev and the Kilburger brothers. They're talking about Jesse Brown, the publisher of Canada Land, and his claim that We Charities Council had hired a security firm to look into him and journalist Jaron Kerr. Brown and Kerr have investigated the charity for some time.

Sir, if I may say, with due respect, you are reaching to the bottom of the barrel the charity for Jesse Brown. It is on Jesse Brown's Twitter. It answers the question decisively. I'm not interested in looking at Twitter. I'm looking for an answer. So yes or no, did your law firm hire a private investigator to look into these reporters? Yes or no? Sir, we've been here for four hours and now you're threatening us. We just feel that this is not appropriate. There is a very clear public record on this. Yes or no? Yes or no?

For more about the Killbergers' testimony before the Finance Committee on Tuesday afternoon, you can go to CBC News. On Thursday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau himself will be appearing before the same committee. And we'll tell you about how that goes down on Friday's show. That's all for today. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.