The lights dim, the table suddenly shifts, and a woman screams! The medium, a Mr Bob McKenzie, is the only spiritualist in the land who doesn’t need to resort to trickery; his connection beyond the veil is genuine. Some others let the lesser spirits, known as agents, speak with their voice in an eerie and alarming spectacle fit only for sideshows. But McKenzie contacts the higher spirits.

The kinds of higher spirits that get you a 40 page PDF before everyone else has it:

All of this has to be voted on by both the NHLPA and the Board of Governors, together in a package with the CBA MOU when it’s all ready to go, but the timing here says that’s going to be soon. It needs to be tomorrow to really fit this in.

Our policy up to now has been: No news until it’s real news, but this could get lost in the shuffle of the CBA details, so for now, let’s all assume McKenzie. and whoever else chimes in around the table to speak for the NHL, is 100% correct, and anything that’s subsequently revealed to be incomplete or inaccurate will be updated later.

The most important part of the Phase 3 rules also sets the timing:

Even if a player vote begins tomorrow, it’s entirely possible this won’t be voted on before that deadline of July 7, which is Tuesday, at 5 p.m. The teams will then have two days to submit their player lists. Those feel like the dates from when the plan was for training camp to start on July 10, not the current assumed July 13.

Players can be opted out if they break the rules. Maybe we should call this the party in St. Louis rule:

McKenzie notes that the protocols include a set of travel and quarantine (used interchangeably with self-isolation) requirements that vary depending on the context, so we’ll need to wait for the full document to know how an American in USA with a positive COVID-19 test coming to Canada has to behave.

Testing frequency will increase from the Phase 2 twice a week program:

Consideration for players with particular risk factors is built in:

Yet another voice is heard around the table with news on when the hub will host families:

We can consider this the informal, formal announcement of Toronto and Edmonton as the two hub cities, and this lets a small cat out of the bag as well. There was an early leaked report that the Stanley Cup Final would be in Edmonton, and then that was formally reported to be not yet certain. Now we seem to be back to the Cup awarded under the majestic rocky mountain skyline.

It’s an open question if the economic impact to a hub location is going to be substantial enough to have warranted this effort on the part of cities looking to be hosts. Whatever the individual motivations of politicians and government officials, the political ramifications of the NHL going from a spot on the conference call with the President of the United States in April to crossing the border entirely to finish the season in July could be significant. It is at least a potent symbol of the state of affairs today.

Now back to the seance...

The NHL is warning teams they are to follow the rules as well:

Now we have a conflict in reporting:

So is it just in Phase 3, the NHL is going to try to keep the obvious a secret, or will they try that during play as well? This might need the real document to sort out.

There are a lot more rules about testing, illness, family or other contacts becoming ill, and that’s all largely what you’d expect from something like this. But if you needed a reminder that the NHL is the entertainment business:

On the one hand, isn’t running a team’s social media already a thankless task? On the other hand, there won’t be roving media either.

And now, the seance is breaking up and everyone is talking at once, and it’s getting hard to tell what refers to Phase 3 or Phase 4. But the “bubble” likely means all activities at the hub city. But without knowing exactly what the bubble rules are, this is hard to figure out what “leave” means. Leave the hotel? Leave the city? Leave the country?

The final word goes the Elliotte Friedman, who tweeted out the big one: What if it all goes wrong?

That seems like enough from beyond the veil. When the full document is available, we’ll provide a summary and links. For now, be careful which tweets you take seriously:

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