Adelaide, Port Adelaide and St Kilda sweltered through extraordinary temperatures for football at AAMI Stadium, prompting Saints coach Scott Watters to call for a review of the League's procedures.
"We have to have a close look at the heat policy; I mean that was pretty hot," Watters said on Sunday.
Despite the heat, the AFL declined to reduce the length of the 20-minute halves to 17 minutes.
Speaking from Healesville Sanctuary on Monday, as part of Collingwood's community camp in Healesville, Buckley said player welfare should be the priority.
"If we're playing in 35-plus-degree conditions, there's a duty of care to the playing group to make sure that we shuffle things a little bit to make sure players aren't under undue duress," Buckley said.
"I'm sure the AFL and AFLPA will come to some arrangement and I'd be surprised if we didn't see some movement to support the welfare of players."
With their next NAB Cup assignment against West Coast in seasonally hot Perth, Buckley said there had to be room to tweak the rules if necessary.
Clubs will be forced to trim their squads to 22 from now on as the AFL's trial of a cap on interchange rotations takes effect.
Clubs are permitted to make just 80 interchange rotations, 20 per quarter, under the new trial rule.
Buckley understands the AFL's need to analyse the impact of limiting interchange rotations, but believes bench numbers should be boosted in situations similar to those on Sunday.
"The AFL are, once again, the ones that need to juggle it, but common sense will prevail," he said.
The Pies are in good shape heading into the rest of the pre-season tournament after their wins against Essendon and the Western Bulldogs on Friday night.
Buckley said the club was ahead of where it was 12 months ago.
"Clearly we believe the decisions we made on the trade table in our recruiting have us better placed," he said.
"We believe that we're in a position to contend for premierships right now and a lot of our decisions came with that in mind.
"We feel we're stronger and we feel we're deeper."
