When Gilles Courteau announced a couple of weeks ago the QMJHL would open the season on Oct. 1, it raised some eyebrows because of the sheer audacity of the optimism.
But one thing I’ve learned about the Quebec league commissioner over the past two decades is he never makes a concrete statement without first exhaustively consulting everyone around him and then carefully studying everything he’s gleaned to make sure he’s proceeding prudently.
Courteau said there are five QMJHL committees with more than 40 members studying how to navigate COVID-19 and the restrictions that go with it. He even jokes about knowing everything there is to know about videoconferencing technology now after months of online meetings during the quarantine.
He is well versed in every issue to do with the pandemic’s impact on hockey and it’s abundantly clear he and the league did not rush into their Oct. 1 decision. To be clear, Courteau also can’t offer 100 per cent guarantees because the coronavirus doesn’t work that way. But he also said because of recent progress and milestones the past two weeks, he’s even more confident now in his Oct. 1 goal than when he made the announcement.
“First of all we all knew that September 10th, which was the original schedule, was probably impossible because of the school situation and also we didn’t know what the government or public health’s position was,” Courteau said. “But then the COVID-19 situation started to evolve in a positive way, and what I mean by that is the number of people infected across the four provinces (where the league operates) or people passing away kept improving. So after talking with the four provinces about our goal of starting October 1st, nobody told us that was something impossible to think about. Everybody was positive and everybody was receptive so that’s the main reason why we could announce October 1st as a start date.
“We also told the governments we would follow all public health and government recommendations to make sure that we’ll be onside. And lastly, we are working on a return to play plan that will be submitted to the government and public health (leaders) of the four provinces no later than mid-July. We’ll see what’s going to be the reaction. In the meantime, we’ll have a better idea of the evolution of the pandemic and the restrictions. It’s changing in a positive way on a daily basis so that’s why I’m getting more confident all the time. The only thing I don’t know today is how many spectators are going to be allowed at our buildings.”
Just recently, rinks in Quebec and the Maritimes reopened. There can’t be any games or full practices yet but it’s a huge step in the right direction. Players are already allowed to skate at safe distances and it’s starting to feel like it’s just a matter of time before they can be in full contact on the ice. It’s much easier now to picture a training camp in September, followed by games a couple of weeks later.
And speaking of training camps, Courteau isn’t yet in a position to pin down what they will look like. In the past, camps opened in mid-August and ran for about five weeks. It seems likely they will be shortened to about two weeks this year, especially since the reality is general managers and coaches know what about 90 per cent of their final roster will look like even before they run their first drill. A camp could probably even be as short as one week, so two weeks is more than enough.
Another wrinkle is schooling. The players are almost all teenagers and a majority of the kids from Quebec are in the CEGEP system. Traditionally, training camps had to open in mid-August in order to stay on schedule with the CEGEP registration deadline.
Courteau said he has been in constant contact with education administrators and sounds confident exceptions can be made this year. There may even be extra flexibility with the introduction of new online programs necessitated by COVID-19 that will allow players to do their course work anywhere.
So if schooling and rink access won’t be a problem, what does that leave? The biggest factors are travel restrictions and the financial sustainability of a league that may have a limited number of paying fans.
First, Courteau and his committees are in front of the travel complications. Players who need to report to a team in a different province should be approved for a 14-day quarantine process, if that’s even required in September. Similar practices should be in place for Americans and Europeans by then.
However, once all the players are done with their isolations, how will teams travel to play each other? For one, we are getting closer all the time to some kind of bubble in the Maritimes. Nova Scotia, P.E.I. and New Brunswick are already at zero active cases, or at least very close to it. Without jinxing anything, we should be even further ahead in a couple of months.
The situation in Quebec is also improving daily and there are obviously no restrictions in place for travel within the province. So a conceivable scenario for the QMJHL is to structure the schedule so the Maritime teams only play each other in the first half of the season and the Quebec teams do the same. They can reassess at Christmastime if the virus is still a major problem. Courteau didn’t want to say if that’s how the league will look, but he didn’t dismiss it either.
And that only leaves the business model. Operating a major junior team is expensive and the biggest source of revenue, by far, is ticket sales. If rinks have to stay empty for games or even be only partially full, how will that work?
Again, Courteau doesn’t want to commit to how it will look on Oct. 1 because time is still on the league’s side. He knows they may only have 50 people in the stands for season openers, for example, but it might be more. We don’t know today what restrictions will look like three and a half months from now.
What Courteau does say is there are contingencies in place for every kind of modified operation and he sounded confident it would work, regardless of what the actual circumstances on Oct. 1. Consider the run of bad news we’ve been on the past few months, this is a welcome sign of some kind of light at the end of the tunnel.
