The NHL will resume play on Tuesday, December 28, for the league to examine the COVID-19 test results and determine whether or not players are ready to play, the league announced last week. The Dallas Stars will resume play on December 29.
After their Christmas break, teams return to practice on Sunday, December 26. The season was set to resume with 14 games on Monday, but those games have been rescheduled. The Dallas Stars were scheduled to host the Nashville Predators on Monday night at the American Airlines Center, but the game was postponed.
The league’s holiday break began on December 22.
This season, the NHL has rescheduled 64 games. According to NBC Sports, the NHL has announced the decision to forgo competing in the 2022 Beijing Olympics. The NHL had planned to take a break from the season from February 6 to 22 to allow players to participate. However, that time slot will now be used to reschedule some of the games that had been postponed.
“We’ve sent out communication with clubs, and we’re trying to confirm their open building dates, which we have a sense of from earlier communications earlier in the season,” NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said last Thursday. “We obviously will work very close with the Players’ Association. I do think we’ll have to build in some off time during that three-week period for the players as they had anticipated previously. There are a lot of boxes to check there, but I expect that we’ll be able to portion some portion of that break period to various clubs to get their players rested, and I hope to make full utilization of the period so that we can make up the games that we’ve missed.”
The Stars will travel to Colorado on December 29 to play the Avalanche before returning home to host them on New Year’s Eve. The away Colorado game can be viewed on TNT, and tickets for the December 31 contest are on sale here.
The last time the Stars and Avalanche met, November 26, Dallas earned a 3-1 victory. The Dallas Stars come out of the holiday break riding a two-game win streak and have compiled a record of 15-12-2 for a total of 32 points. Their record on the season has the Stars in sixth place in the Western Central division, where first-place Minnesota has a total of 40 points.
