I proposed a schedule for the Comets weeks ago and it's in this thread if you hunt back through it.
Utica, Syracuse, Binghamton, and Rochester have to be the 4 closest AHL teams to one another in the league. Utica is the farthest to the east and Rochester to the west and they are a 2 hour bus ride away. Syracuse is in the middle. All are directly off the NYS thruway. Bingo is south of Utica and 1hr 10mins from Syracuse, 1hr 53mins from Utica, and 2hrs 26mins from Rochester. With game times at 7 pm these teams play each other and are in their own beds before or at least around midnight.
Other teams in the Division are the 3 Canadian teams of Ottawa, Toronto, and Laval. The border issue could make them difficult to include, but the 3 NYS teams have rides between 3-5 hours to each of these cities.
New York State has a Covid deal with it's surrounding states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Rhode Island to allow travel between the states based upon the most current situation with the virus state by state. Providence, R.I., Springfield, Mass., Bridgeport, CT., Hartford, CT., Hershey, PA., and Allentown, PA. are all teams that the 3 NYS teams play every season anyways. Depending upon which team you're talking about, all of these teams are between 2 and a half and 4 and a half hours away from the NY teams.
You could easily arrange a schedule with the NY teams and then let each of them play the nearest of theses other teams whether in Canada or the other teams in the northeastern states to fill out the schedule.
Those eastern teams of Bridgeport, Hartford, Providence, and Springfield have the same sort of proximity to each other as the NY teams. You could have both foursomes comprise divisions playing the bulk of the games within their division and then play a few crossover games vs the closest teams from the other division and include the Canadian trio in these non division games.
e.g.
- Binghamton is 2 hours and change from Hershey and Allentown.
- Utica is 2 hours and change from Springfield and 3 hours from Hartford.
- Syracuse is 3 hours from Ottawa and Allentown.
- Rochester is 3 hours from Toronto and 4 from Ottawa.
Almost all of the teams are within 4-5 hours at the most. A weekend road trip could put any of them in one city on Friday after a 3-4 hour or less ride and then leave them with a short jaunt to their Saturday game and another short jaunt for a Sunday game. Then they have all of the next week to rest up and practice for the next weekend within the their own Division. They could also take the longer ride for a single Friday game, come home and play on Sunday. It would take some creative schedule making, but a season could be had even if played with a shortened schedule with less travel than normal, but more games vs the same opponents.
I'm not a rocket scientist, but I can see how things could be arranged so the prospects don't lose a year or more of competition. Being placed on a black aces squad with practice in an NHL city won't get them the progression they need to up their game to an NHL level. They need lots of game time intensity. There are similar situations of teams throughout the league having close proximity to 2 or 3 other teams similar to the NY teams where these kind of schedules could be worked out. You'd have to reconsider a Calder cup playoff postponement under this kind of setup, but the prospects would get a season of game play.