Dallas Stars announce they will host 5,000 fans to start the season!

The Dallas Stars have seemingly just become the first team to take a huge step towards something resembling a return to normalcy for the National Hockey League and its fan base. Although there has been no official announcement from the Stars themselves, it does appear as though they intend to host fans when they begin their season in 2021.

Stars reporter Saad Yousuf of The Athletic reports that Stars President and CEO Brad Alberts informed him that the Stars will in fact have fans to start the season. Furthermore according to Yousuf the Stars expect that the number of fans will range somewhere around 5,000, so this is no small operation that we are talking about, even if it will be drastically reduced from what you would expect in pre-pandemic times.

The setup is expected to be something that will resemble the watch parties that the organization put on at the American Airlines Center this past September when the Stars were competing in the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs. The events were what the Stars dubbed "socially-distanced Watching Parties" that featured limited seating and mandatory mask wearing for those in attendance. 

No doubt we can expect more details as we get closer to puck drop on the 13th of January, or whenever the Stars first home game of the season will be scheduled for, but this is already a clear indication that there are NHL owners and teams who intend to bring fans back into the mix early on for the 2021 regular season. The Stars may be the first to make this kind of a public announcement in that regard, but chances are with so much money on the line they won't be the last.