As the 2020-21 season approaches – we may not have a start date but by definition, we're one day closer to the season starting – it's worth thinking about what a shortened season will bring. We are lucky in that we had a shortened season seven years ago to refer to, at any rate.

One thing I have been thinking about is the schedule. Whether we end up with 48 games, or 54 games, or 60 games, we're not going to be playing 82. We also know that the league is putting an emphasis on finishing this season, playoffs and all, in a timeframe that allows them to start the 2021-22 schedule on a somewhat normal timing. With the league needing revenue, my assumption is they squeeze in as many games as quickly as possible.

Anyway, all that leads to this: I am not sure how much goaltender rest we're going to see. It has been infrequent over recent seasons to see a goalie play both ends of a back-to-back situation but we're going to be in a shortened scenario. For example, last year, the Jets had eight back-to-backs and Connor Hellebuyck played both ends of them just once. When we get to the shortened season, it won't just be the back-to-backs that coaches will need to concern themselves with, it's also the three-in-fours and the four-in-sixes that will matter. There are going to be more of those as well. At a certain point, I don't wonder if coaches are going to just play their starters.

When looking back to the 2013 shortened season, the Blackhawks had 10 back-to-back situations, the Canadiens had eight, the Panthers had six, and the Ducks had nine (I only looked up a handful of teams, but I remember this being a big sticking point when making the schedules). If we get around a 50-game season, that could be as much as 20 percent of the season played on B2Bs. Things rarely work out as neatly as "we'll give the B2Bs to the backup and every other game to the starter." There will be injuries, COVID cases, family emergencies, and whatever else that normally pops up.

All this is to say I think we see goalies playing both ends of a B2B a lot more often than we think we might, or should. This is especially true for potential bubble playoff teams with a good starter like Winnipeg, Anaheim, or Calgary. It may not be true for teams like Boston or Vegas, who have two starters but are also a lock playoff team barring some sort of disaster.

This is going to be a sprint season for teams in every regard. I believe that's true when it comes to goalie rest, but it will also be true to riding the hot hand in net as well.

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— Hockey Club Davos (@HCDavos_off) December 7, 2020

Anyone looking for a Christmas gift for that special hockey fan, it's hard to think of a better present in 2020. It might double as a good Halloween costume 10 months from now, who knows.

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One thing I have been thinking about a lot is not playing typical season-long fantasy leagues this coming season. I have a couple home leagues I will play in, of course. Other than that, I think I will be doing best ball leagues.

Best ball leagues are a simple concept: you draft your team, set a roster at the start of each week, and that's it. No trades, no waivers, no adding/dropping, no nothing. The roster you draft is the roster you start with and you just set your lineup once a week.

Just generally, this is fun because you can do a ton of leagues to see how different things can work out. If your strategy works out, you can reap a similar ROI with a lot less work than playing in traditional season-long fantasy leagues. Last year, they had these offerings on the Fantasy Hockey World Championship site. I am waiting to see if they bring it back this year.

Specifically, I am not going through a regular fantasy season that will likely be worse than what we've endured in fantasy football and baseball. The Miami Marlins missing a week (among other teams), 7-inning games, and double-headers were necessary for the MLB to get their season in. That was a catastrophe for fantasy baseball. Over in the NFL, they're just straight fudging numbers to have a semblance of a normal season.

Now, let's think about the NHL. If media members aren't allowed in the rinks as they weren't in the summer – and remember how fun that was trying to figure out who was playing with whom every day when no media was around to give out forward lines/defence pairs? – what is this going to be like in the NHL with America bordering on a quarter-million daily cases? While I hope the flow of accurate information will keep flowing, I have my concerns that it will.

Even if media are allowed at practices, how many late scratches because of false positives, incomplete samples, or anything else are we going to see? What if, like in MLB when daily cases were by orders of magnitude lower, we see entire teams have to take one or two weeks off? Are fantasy managers going to leave Crosby/Malkin on their rosters if the Penguins have to take 14 days off?

This is where it'll be very important for fantasy owners to know what they want out of a season. If it's simply to have a rooting interest and spend time trash-talking your friends, then it should be no problem to keep that up. For those with financial motivations, well, all I can say is that playing DFS during the summer with often incomplete and sometimes incorrect information was not a lot of fun.

The last thing I want to do, as someone who makes money off writing on and betting on hockey, is disincentivize people to play it this season. At the same time, I also don't want people jumping into fantasy hockey, having it be a complete disaster, and walking away forever. All I can reiterate is that fantasy owners and their friends need to know exactly what they want out of this coming fantasy campaign, because traditional season-long leagues are going to take more work than usual.

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Over the last couple of weeks I have been writing about changing power-play units. One team that is of interest is Vegas. Last year, they ran a heavily-used top unit that featured Shea Theodore on the blue line. Now, they have both Theodore and Alex Pietrangelo. Both are going to get power-play minutes, so it's a matter of how that time will be split.

My initial lean is that this team is going to effectively run two split units, one helmed by Theodore and one by Pietrangelo. How the forwards are split, and whether time is split evenly, is another matter. But I do not think they signed Pietrangelo for nearly $9M a season to leave him off the power play, and Theodore is too good to leave him off as well.

That is good news for depth forwards like Alex Tuch or a rookie like Cody Glass, as they may get more PP time than they would have if Pietrangelo not been signed. But it's probably bad news for Theodore as he may get his PPTOI cut, and the same will be true for Alec Martinez, who actually averaged over two minutes per game of PPTOI in the playoffs. This is all provided they run two different 4F/1D units. If not, he could still get close to that same level of PPTOI.

There are changes coming to Vegas, though how many and how big is still unknowable. This seems like a case where the team got better but it may not necessarily mean good things fantasy-wise for everyone affected.

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Where does everyone stand on Martin Necas? He will be 22 years old for next season and it's his third pro season in North America (second in the NHL). His playmaking numbers, like shot assists and zone entries with control, were very good last year (from CJ Turtoro’s viz):

They were similarly good the year before. There are two questions here: does he earn more ice time and does he shoot more? He was given third-line minutes last year and was nowhere near even two shots per game. Being a great playmaker is nice for real hockey, but to be a valuable fantasy commodity, he needs more than assists, and relying on 18 percent shooting to get near 20 goals is a real bad idea.

He seems to be developing into a wonderful player, but I don't wonder if he ends up being more valuable in real life. He does hit, so he can bring something in banger leagues, but without the shots and goals, it might not be enough. All the same, I'm excited to see what he can do in the coming couple years.