All NWHL regular-season games from the Lake Placid bubble will be streamed on TwitchGETTY IMAGES
The NWHL for its sixth season will "hold a two-week bubble season starting Saturday at Lake Placid, N.Y.," with the league's semifinals and one-game Isobel Cup to "air exclusively on NBC Sports Network on Feb. 4 and 5," according to Mark J. Burns of SPORTS BUSINESS JOURNAL. It will mark the "first time women’s professional hockey games will be shown on a major national cable network" in the U.S. The NWHL's eight-person BOG will "personally foot the bill for the season." The "price tag will extend into the low seven figures and include a $150,000 salary cap per team, plus multiple local hotel accommodations, food and COVID-19 testing, among other expenses." BOG member John Boynton said, "Cost matters, but cost was never going to stand in the way of us pulling this off." New Commissioner Tyler Tumminia explained that it "was 'imperative' for the league to 'maintain a presence' amid the pandemic, even if it meant a condensed season." Burns notes all regular-season games will be livestreamed on Twitch (SPORTS BUSINESS JOURNAL, 1/18 issue).
LOGISTICS FOR PLAYERS: SPORTSNET.ca's Marisa Ingemi wrote following the "success of the WNBA and NWSL bubbles," the NWHL "took lessons from over the summer to implement in a bubble of their own, in one of the most historic sites in hockey." With a short season, spanning roughly two weeks, they had to "make an impact where they could." Perhaps the "biggest difficulty is the logistics." Unlike the NHL or other legacy sports leagues, the NWHL’s players "don’t play full-time." As such, they all had to "find ways to get the two weeks off -- or work remotely from Lake Placid -- to play this season." The NWHL has "asked its players to test since October, especially when unofficial practices began." Players will be "tested 72 hours before they leave for Lake Placid and again before entry, then they get tested throughout the tournament before an exit test." The players will "stay at a hotel nearby and are restricted to movement between where they’re staying, and the rink" (SPORTSNET.ca, 1/18).
