It was perhaps inevitable given the lack of activity at TD Garden these days, but the ice that normally stays intact throughout the hockey season has melted away on Causeway Street.
Normally this is something done at the end of a Bruins' Stanley Cup playoff run, or at the end of the regular season if the B’s don’t make the playoffs, but now it serves as an indicator there won’t be hockey in the building anytime soon. The NHL still harbors hope they can hold playoffs later in the spring or perhaps even over the summer, but it doesn’t seem as though high-attendance events will be held for at least the next couple of months.
The good news is that it would only take a matter of days for the TD Garden bull gang to put down a new frozen sheet. The bad news is that the ice wouldn’t be very high quality if the Stanley Cup playoffs were to be played in June, July or August as some suspect might have to happen if the NHL wants to get a finish to this season.
It wouldn’t be ideal conditions, of course, but at least there might be some hockey for everybody.
At the time that the NHL season was suspended, sources at TD Garden indicated to NBC Sports Boston that the building was being asked to keep dates open for the playoffs at least into July. The latest the Stanley Cup playoffs have ended was the 2013 Cup Final series between the Bruins and Blackhawks with the final Game 6 played in Boston on June 24.
“If the season is salvaged these guys can freeze a new sheet in a day or two, no big deal,” said one TD Garden employee to the Boston Globe.
Clearly, there was no good reason for the Bruins to ring up the cooling expenses to keep the TD Garden ice if there weren’t any immediate plans for hockey. There hasn’t been hockey at the Garden since the Bruins last played a home date March 7, and it doesn’t appear there's any reason for optimism that we’ll see hockey back in Boston in April.