Thursday was a dark day for the Vegas Golden Knights and the rest of the sports world, and we all wait now to see what is next.
Yesterday will be known as the day that sports stopped with the Vegas Golden Knights and the rest of the NHL hitting the pause button on the 2019-20 regular season, while Major League Baseball and the MLS also shut up shop for now.
A plethora of other high-profile sporting events were also cancelled, with leagues across the globe battening down the hatches as the world continues to grapple with the pandemic Coronavirus.
There is no blueprint as to what is next and, given the scary times we currently live in, we aren’t going to make bold predictions.
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That wouldn’t be fair or right.
What we do know is that NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman struck a positive and optimistic tone in his official statement, putting emphasis on the fact that the 2019-20 regular season is paused for now.
Bettman revealed that the NHL hopes to resume play “as soon as it is appropriate and prudent” to do so.
When exactly hockey could return and how the landscape would look when it does is impossible to work out right now and, again, it wouldn’t be fair to speculate given that this is an incredibly fluid situation and things could change on a day-to-day basis.
It was reported on Thursday, however, that teams have looked into arena availability for July, with shortened postseason series a possibility.
The NHL could resume the regular season or jump straight into the playoffs, depending on the containment of the COVID-19.
The Golden Knights currently have 11 regular season games remaining, which could be played at a later date.
Or, as already mentioned, the NHL could opt to jump straight into the postseason and use the current standings to determine who would be in.
If that was the path taken the Golden Knights would be crowned the Pacific Division Champions and would have home-ice advantage, while facing the Nashville Predators before taking on either the Edmonton Oilers or the Vancouver Canucks in the Western Conference Second Round.
There is also the grim possibility that we have seen our final hockey action of the year and that all major sports won’t return until next year.
Obviously, that is the worse case scenario and let’s hope it doesn’t get to that point, but the first priority of course has to be people’s health and well-being.
For now, it is a waiting game and players will remain at home with no practice until they are given the green light to return to some level of normality.
As sports fans, this is going to be a weird time, especially as so many of us go to sports in times of upset and to lift us up.
Again, we want everyone to be safe and our thoughts are with everyone going through a real difficult time right now.
Our Coverage
I’ll be honest, I’ve been in a bit of a daze since yesterday but, as far as Vegas Hockey Knight goes, life goes on and normal service will carry on.
While there will be no games or action from the NHL for the foreseeable, we as a site pride ourselves on our ability to provide engaging and unique content, rather than just producing game recaps and standard news articles.
As such, we will be bringing you plenty of content over the coming weeks as we all adjust to life without hockey.
We aren’t going anywhere.
If you have any ideas you would like to see us produce, please let us know in the comments section below and we would be more than happy to oblige!
So, thank you for sticking with us and let’s all march on and get through this difficult time together as one.