misstie pollard / flickr

The Western Hockey League’s shortened season came to a close last week, but the work for the league and team offices is just beginning. According to Andy Beesley, Vice President of Business with the Prince George Cougars, the league is already far along in the process of finalizing next season’s regular season schedule.

“We are already heavily working on next season’s schedule, in fact it is probably 95% finished, and beyond that what we are facing immediately is how do we plan for a season when we don’t even know if we will be allowed to have fans in the building.”

The uncertainty surrounding next season has not stopped the league from doing all the work they can to be prepared, but not knowing the state of travel restrictions and fan allowance makes the immediate future of the league and CHL as a whole foggy.

“I guess on a business level all across the province we have used the term ‘shoveling fog,’ and so a lot of us have been doing heavy lifting, shoveling, shoveling, shoveling fog all day long trying to plan for stuff we don’t really even understand”

Historically, the WHL regular season starts in late September after a multiple week training camp for all of the league’s teams.