Hockey is ready to come back! It just won't be before July 1st.
According to NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman, the NHL is planning a 4 phase roll out to resume play. As rumored earlier in the month, there will be a 24 team playoff structure with the top 4 teams of each conference (east/west) who will play a round robin tournament to determine the top four playoff seeds. The remaining 8 teams will play in a best of 5 series to determine seeds 5 - 8. Games will be hosted in 2 hub cities (one for eastern conference, one for the west) and personnel will be limited to 50 per team. Early June is the target time period where teams can return to home facilities for on/off ice training, with official training camps expected to resume sometime after July 1st. Bettman also stated that the 2019-2020 regular season is officially closed.