Russia (bbabo.net), - On Tuesday, January 11, the Kontinental Hockey League will discuss the coronavirus situation with clubs, as well as discuss possible scenarios for the end of the regular season and the playoffs of the 2021/22 season. The league management is not going to stop the regular season yet.

- We have accumulated a lot of experience over the previous season. The Kontinental Hockey League is one of the few leagues that did not stop the championship, but ended it and finished the playoffs. As I said, players and employees have immunity, so we hope that this championship will also be held non-stop, - KHL President Alexei Morozov assured in September.

Now it seems that the league did not quite correctly assess the situation. In recent days in the KHL, they only talked about a possible pause in the regular season.

The first bell rang back in November, when the match between Ufa “Salavat Yulaev” and Chelyabinsk “Traktor” was canceled. Then the coronavirus was not found in anyone, but at once several hockey players of "Salavat" showed symptoms of SARS. According to the rules of Bashkortostan, the whole team had to go into quarantine, and the KHL credited the Yulaevites with a technical defeat, clearly considering this case as an isolated one. It was only after the onset of the new year that the epidemic broke out in succession in several clubs and it quickly became clear that giving out "techies" left and right was not at all a solution to the problem. Confirmation of this is the recently canceled World Youth Championship in Canada. To date, not counting the November incident, 12 matches have already been postponed to the KHL. Obviously, there will still be covert force majeure and something needs to be done about it. Leaving the KHL for an unplanned break is one of the options.

Let's just say that not all the clubs in the league reacted positively to him. Supporters of the pause insisted that it would help avoid further spread of covid and save players for the Olympic tournament, which will take place in February. However, there are much more counterarguments. First of all, the incredible density of the calendar. The KHL season is squeezed, on the one hand, by the Olympic Games, for which the Russian national team will begin preparations on January 20, on the other hand, by the May World Championship. Finding suitable dates for already rescheduled matches is a headache for the league leadership. If you leave for an extra pause, there will be even more unplayed matches.

13 matches of the KHL regular championship have been canceled or postponed to date

As a solution to the problem, it was proposed to play the postponed matches during the Olympics. But now the clubs cannot count on the leading players, because they got into the covid protocol, and then they will leave for Beijing. Another option is to reduce the number of regular season matches. However, in this case, it may turn out that some clubs had a much lighter calendar than others, which means that there will still be a lot of dissatisfied ones.

Was it possible to somehow avoid all these torments in advance? It would be if the league followed the vector outlined in that very last season. Then there were no fewer infections, the disease proceeded in a more severe form, but the clubs attracted players from the farm clubs and youth teams to the games as a basis. From this point of view, particular bewilderment was caused by the cancellation of the SKA - CSKA match due to the many infected in the Moscow club. Well, someone who, but CSKA, one of the richest clubs, could well recruit reservists. Petersburg team last season fought against the capital's teammates youth, and no one asked for a transfer.

But the KHL seems to have missed the moment. And now she is forced to look for alternative ways out of this situation. In the meantime, following the results of yesterday's meeting of the league leadership, the following decision was made: "Matches of clubs where there is a threat of mass infection will be canceled (with a decision on the possibility of their holding later), and clubs where the epidemiological situation is stable will continue to play."

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