WE HAVE A PLAN!

Before today, August 1st was just a regular day that carried no significance at all unless of course you were Aquaman.

In the very likely chance you aren't Jason Momoa, August 1st now rings loudly with a beautiful harmonious tone throughout my soul as the NHL and NHLPA reached a deal this afternoon on a plan for the NHL to resume their season on the fateful day of AUGUST FIRST. August First could easily be the name of a heavy metal band. Just throw on some scary, unreadable font and you're on your way to success. Here, i made three samples:

Training camps for participating teams will begin on July 13th before players and staff head to their designated hub city on July 26th. While there have been no official announcements on hub cities quite yet, the rumor mill has Toronto and Edmonton as the most favorable cities for the NHL.

The return to play news is awesome and fantastic, but there's also a bunch of other cool things attached to this deal. The NHL and the NHLPA have also have an agreement in play to extend the current CBA to 2026. What does that mean? No Lockout! Hopefully, anyway. The vote still has yet to be ratified but if everything goes smoothly, we could potentially see NHL players return to the Olympics.

There are still valid concerns for the players safety and with a situation as fluid as a global pandemic, anything can happen. But I want to focus on the good rather than the bad right now because the world has been pretty much all bad since December 31st, 2019. We all have something to look forward too. This could be, God willing, one of the only times ever we will see a crazy playoff format such as this one. So let's roll with the insanity and enjoy it as much as we can. Cheers to the wonderful game of hockey coming back and the Minnesota Wild finding a way to get bounced out in the first round again.