PHOENIX, Ariz. — NHL commissioner Gary Bettman reached out to clubs Thursday morning to tell them the regular season would be suspended due to the spread of the coronavirus, a source indicated to The Post. There was a call scheduled for 1 p.m. to work out some of the details on what is a very fluid situation.
The league had already cancelled morning skates and practices Thursday morning, and they told teams to start working with their buildings to find dates to host games into July. An official announcement was expected later Thursday afternoon.
The league made this inevitable decision in the wake of
the NBA announcing the suspension of its season Wednesday night while games were still going on. A big difference was an NBA player, Rudy Gobert of the Utah Jazz,
tested positive on Wednesday for the virus. As of Thursday afternoon, no NHL player was known to have the virus.
Because NHL locker rooms are filled with hot and sweaty equipment, every year teams have flu bugs run through their team. There have also been more serious instances of contagious illness in the past, such as when the mumps went around in 2014 — Penguins star Sidney Crosby contracted it
and his face ballooned.
It’s not easy to sanitize a sport in which people work in such close proximity, but that is what the league tried to do late last week when they made the recommendation that
teams close their locker rooms to the media. For a few days, players and coaches were brought to designated interview areas where there was ample distance between them and the media.
It was a strange scenario, and as much as the teams tried to focus on the task at hand, the big picture was impossible to ignore.
“Obviously we’re looking,” Rangers defenseman Marc Staal said from behind a table in Denver on Wednesday night after
a 3-2 overtime loss to the Avalanche. “We’ll play it by ear and react to whatever the league does and go from there.”
Rangers head coach David Quinn opened his postgame press conference with a short statement, explaining that the team was staying in Denver rather than immediately traveling to Arizona, where they were set to play the Coyotes on Saturday night. The Rangers were still awaiting word from the league on Thursday morning.
nypost.com
