Who weeps for the Florida Panthers?
Hey, don't look at me like that. Those of us who love sports, never mind those who make a living off them, are about to have boundless time on our hands. And a big part of mine the day after all the games in all the leagues came to a sudden, strikingly silent stop was to think about the poor Panthers, a franchise so isolated they agreed to be placed in a division with Canadian teams just so those Canadians could buy tickets when their favorites flew south.
Stay with me here, though. I haven't gone completely loco. Yet.
Check out the NHL's Eastern Conference standings, specifically the wild-card picture, now frozen in stasis until further notice:
Know that ages-old line about 'if the season ended today,' well, that day's come. And when it did, the Hurricanes and Blue Jackets, as seen above, held the East's two wild cards. Which means, of course, they'd be the conference's seventh and eighth seeds in the playoffs, and everyone else packs up.
I know, I know, who cares?
But this might matter, as it offers a tiny, if tantalizing example of how and why the novel coronavirus COVID-19 will wreak havoc with the NHL's challenge-to-come in carving out a new path toward raising the Stanley Cup this summer.
See that team under the Blue Jackets up there?
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