The entire sports world has been put on pause amid COVID-19 concerns, with the NHL following the NBA’s suit on Thursday by suspending its season indefinitely. It started a rapid chain reaction that led to other leagues across the global shutting down immediately.
The hiatus comes at an interesting time for the NHL, which was in the heart of its stretch run leading up to the Stanley Cup Playoffs. There were supposed to be three weeks left in the regular season.
Now, it’s unclear if and when play will resume and what that could look like despite NHL commissioner Gary Bettman saying the goal is to award a Stanley Cup winner this season.
In the grand scheme of things, what happens next in sports is far down on the list of things that matter in society right now even though that’s what we turn to in times like these. But this is an unprecedented situation.
Before the NHL shut down, the Blackhawks routed the San Jose Sharks 6-2 after losing consecutive games in regulation to Detroit and St. Louis. It was a nice bounce-back effort for the Blackhawks in a game that still meant something to them.
"We were pretty excited about this three-game stretch we had here," Patrick Kane said. "San Jose, Ottawa and Washington, and trying to win these games and get ourselves back into it again."
Instead, the Blackhawks are left waiting like all of us on what the next step is. Will the regular season be shortened? What will the playoffs look like? Will the season have to be punted on altogether?
NHL
These are questions nobody knows the answer to with the circumstances changing by the hour. So let's take a look at where things stand with the Blackhawks.
If you take a peek at the standings, you'll find the Blackhawks at 72 points through 70 games. They're six points out of the final wildcard spot in the Western Conference and have four teams to jump. It doesn't seem insurmountable on paper, but according to Money Puck, their playoff odds are at 3.4 percent.
On the flip side, the Blackhawks have the ninth-worst points percentage in the league at .514. According to Tankathon, they have better odds of landing the No. 1 overall pick (5.0 percent) than securing a playoff spot at this point. Their chances of hitting the lottery for a second straight year and landing inside the Top 3 is at 16.0 percent.
The Blackhawks are almost certainly going to miss out on the playoffs for a third straight year, whether the season continues in some capacity or not. And it’s not a position the organization thought it would find itself in going into the 2019-20 campaign.
There will be plenty of time to dive into what the Blackhawks could do in the offseason to get back on track and forecast what the future might hold. But right now, hockey has been halted and we don't even know what tomorrow will hold.
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