Numbers breakdown During the bubble, 247 regular season matches and 53 playoff matches were missed by injured players. From the average of the previous five seasons, 340 games were missed in the regular season and 77 in the playoffs. Faster recovery According to the data, injured players missed an average of 2.9 regular season matches inside the bubble before recovering. Meanwhile, in the five seasons before the pandemic, an injured player would miss an average of 3.7 matches. This meant that players injured inside the bubble would recover faster by 24 percent. Similarly, during the playoff stage, player injury rate declined by 31 percent compared to the playoff stages in the last five seasons.