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NHL

Senators owner Eugene Melnyk '100 percent' confident Stanley Cup will be awarded this season

By Paulina Dedaj Fox News
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NHL leaders appear to be far more optimistic than the league’s players about returning to play this season.

Ottawa Senators owner Eugene Melnyk said in an interview with Toronto's FAN590 on Sunday that he is “100 percent” confident that the Stanley Cup will be awarded this season and that next season will be played out in full, according to the Ottawa Sun.

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"One hundred percent. There’s going to be, I really, really believe that and that’s not just me being Mr. Promoter or anything like that," he said. "I just know the resolve is there. Everybody’s on the same mission. We will have playoffs, we will have a Stanley Cup this year and we will have a full schedule next year. It might be a little different … you will have a different playoff this year."

Melnyk's hopes may have been fulfilled by NHL commissioner Gary Bettman.

Bettman announced Monday that the league was exploring “probably eight or nine different places” that would be able to accommodate “a dozen or so teams in one location” to finish out this season.

"We'd like to complete this season," Bettman said, according to NHL.com. "We'd like to award the Stanley Cup, the most treasured trophy and the most historic trophy in all of sports. And our fans are telling us overwhelmingly that's what they'd like us to do, because people have an emotional investment in this season already."

The league is considering ways to finish out the remaining 189 regular-season games instead of jumping straight into the playoffs. One of those plans includes a 24-team playoff format that includes some games before the postseason.

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Players have expressed a similar desire to play hockey again but are more apprehensive about the logistics which include quarantining themselves in centralized locations, for weeks at a time, away from their families.