With COVID-19 cases around North America surging in recent weeks, the National Hockey League schedule has drastically been affected. 

For the first time in three weeks, NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly spoke to the media and sat down with TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun. 

"It's been quite the storm, for sure." Daly told LeBrun. 

"It started changing almost immediately after we left Florida when Calgary had the outbreak that they had." 

Just three weeks ago at the annual board of governors' meeting, the biggest concern was making the Olympics happen. 

With that now off the table, the focus has shifted to playing all 82 games. 

Daly said, "We’ve worked and been working on the revised schedule and filling in February for what would have been the Olympic break." 

"Really, by sheer numbers, if you accept the fact that once you’re hit by COVID you’re not going to get hit again this year, then I don’t foresee an issue in finishing the season." 

While the league continues to work on the revised schedule, no official announcements have been made. Something Daly says is by design. 

"Obviously, we’ll want to make announcements as soon as we can just so clubs and fans can plan. But you don’t want to make announcements too soon where you’re just changing them a week later. So, there’s a balance."

"We were able to get the vast bulk of the games that have been postponed fit nicely into basically that three-week period in February, so we haven’t had to disrupt other elements of the schedule just yet." 

Over the past year, one thing the league and the NHL Players’ Association have talked about is the importance of "getting back on cycle." 

A cycle that was disrupted when the NHL originally shutdown due to COVID-19 in March 2020. 

As it stands, the league has said the Stanley Cup will be handed out in late June, something that would help get back on cycle. 

"I don’t even anticipate needing to go longer than the regular-season window to get all those games in and if we were to need an extra week to finish regular-season games, I would still anticipate us being able to finish the playoffs in the allotted time period. It’s obviously a real objective to finish on the cycle that we’ve set out for ourselves this year and I’m still confident we can get there." 

The Ontario government has capped the crowd size for indoor venues at 1,000 spectators or 50 per cent capacity, whichever is less, as the province deals with an outbreak of COVID-19 cases.

On top of that a number of teams have had some home games postponed for the first part of January, with no team more affected than Montreal.

Daley spoke about the seven Canadian teams, and what the league can do to help them out while arena capacity in parts of Canada is being limited. 

"Obviously, it’s important from a revenue perspective, an HRR (hockey related revenue) perspective, to play before fans and to generate gate revenue. So we’re going to try and be as cooperative and flexible as we possibly can be." 

"I don’t think we can fully compensate for the problem. If in fact these attendance restrictions carry on for multiple weeks, there’s no way we can make up all those games or move or shift all those games. Like everything else, it’ll be a balancing act."