On July 30, 2020, the American Hockey League released the following statement.

“American Hockey League President and CEO Scott Howson has announced a revised start date for the 2020-21 AHL season, as approved by the league’s Board of Governors during its 2020 Annual Meeting held today via conference call.

At the recommendation of the AHL’s Return to Play Task Force, the Board of Governors has approved moving the anticipated start of the 2020-21 regular season to December 4, 2020, due to the ongoing COVID-19 public health crisis. The AHL will continue to work with its member clubs to monitor developments and local guidelines in all 31 league cities.

Further details regarding the 2020-21 American Hockey League schedule are still to be determined.”

AHL moves 2020-21 start date to Dec. 4

So regardless of what you’ve read from some high profile sports networks, December 4, 2020, is a proposed starting date and far from confirmed.

Back in late April, then AHL President and CEO David Andrews said the following when asked about the league’s future moving forward in an interview on Sirius XM radio.

“Over the next six or seven weeks all of those models are going to be developed and then we’ll have kind of trigger points along the summer where we are going to have to make operating decisions
At some point, we’ll understand that we might not play in October. Okay, let’s shift to Plan B. And as we move through that Plan C and Plan D.”

Looking at what is happening in America at this time regarding the pandemic it’s difficult to even picture the league returning in December as the AHL simply cannot function without the financial clout of fans in the building.

On the latest episode of the ‘Around the A’ podcast Patrick Williams mentioned that “the AHL Board of Governors meeting to vote on pushing back the anticipated start date of the 2020-21 season to December 4th, 2020 was NOT a unanimous decision.”

With 31 different teams spread across U.S & Canada, from west to east, this is not an easy situation to manage.
Ultimately finding a solution that will enable the league to begin the 2020-21 campaign at some point is problematic at best.