Let’s play summertime baseball — the ideal time of year to walk into a rink that is refrigerated.

I overlook playing with it in addition to covering hockey. The 1 thing that my private skates have over the NHL is that we do it yearlong — we get to play the game if a beer in the parking lot completes what we believe is an extraordinary event.

Even the cornonavirus pandemic has closed down the NHL along with my community ice rink at Centennial. After the scare is over and life returns to normal, hockey at its greatest level (and lowest) will return at the ideal time of the year.

Remember those deep Avalanche playoff runs from 1996 to 2002, when Denver’s professional staff played late May or even mid-June six times? Fans showed up at Pepsi Center at T-shirts, shorts and sneakers, and they needed a baseball “sweater” to remain warm inside the arena.

Win or lose, gunning for the Stanley Cup at the Mile High City summer was a memorable experience. That could unfold through July and August, and perhaps even September.

For the NHL and NHL Players Association, cancelling what was left of the 2020-21 season doesn’t seem like much of an option unless the government needs it. Each side of the NHL would rather push the season into the summer, and that began in earnest after three big offseason occasions in June were postponed or cancelled.

The participant mix in Buffalo, the NHL awards program at Las Vegas along with the NHL draft in Montreal won’t happen in June, and just the NHL draft could happen at all this summer. Both sides of the league have no difficulty making the 2020 offseason a break before beginning 2020-21 in late October or even November.

The NHL’s biggest question is how to end the regular time and seed the match.

A bunch of elite players, including superstars Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin, have said they’d be fine returning to practice and then going into the playoffs, with seeding based on winning percentage. Another big name, Edmonton’s Connor McDavid, wants the team to finish every team’s closing 11-14 games of the regular season prior to starting the playoffs by using the traditional seeding based.

“A full season’s a fair season,” McDavid stated, according to the Global News.

McDavid’s Oilers have 11 remaining regular-season games and sit in playoff place with 83 points, three behind the Pacific Division-leading Vegas Golden Knights. Edmonton also is second to the Knights in winning percentage, .606 to .585.

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But the Oilers have a five-point guide on the last playoff place, and they can fall from the race playing with those 11 games.

In the Central Division, St. Louis leads the Avalanche in points (94 to 92) and winning percentage (.662 to .657), with Colorado having 12 remaining games and the Blues only 11. If the Avs were allowed to match the Blues from games-played and win this game, the Avs would tie the Blues in both categories — but Colorado would win the tiebreaker (law wins) 37-33.

Therefore the Avs certainly don’t need to restart into the playoffs. They wish to play Game 71.

My very best bet: The Avs will play all 82 regular-season games and have a chance to become the boys of summer.

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