The 2020 World Hockey Championship has been canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the International Ice Hockey Federation announced Saturday.
"This is a harsh reality to face for the international ice hockey family, but one that we must accept,” IIHF president Rene Fasel said. “The coronavirus is a global problem and requires major efforts by government bodies to combat its spread. The IIHF must do all it can to support this fight. We have to set sport aside for now and support both the government bodies and the ice hockey family.”
The tournament was set to take place in Zurich, Switzerland. Since host countries are fixed until 2025, a decision has not been made as to when - if at all - Switzerland will get another chance to host the event.
The 2020 worlds was supposed to begin May 8 and run until May 24. The tournament is usually filled with NHL players whose team's didn't make the playoffs, or had already been eliminated from the postseason. With a possible NHL return currently in flux, that threw a wrench into the IIHF's plans.
Colorado Avalanche prospect Alex Newhook will return to Boston College for his sophomore season in 2020-21, barring unforeseen circumstances.
"I think for me, the plan has not changed as of now," Newhook said, according to The Athletic's Ryan S. Clark. Newhook added: "The Avs are a really strong team and they have a lot of depth. I am in a good spot at BC, and to be in a good spot like this and have this position of not being rushed and not being forced out of a good spot makes my situation that much better."
Selected by Colorado with the 16th overall pick of the 2019 NHL Draft, the 5-foot-11 forward was enjoying a terrific freshman campaign before the NCAA canceled its season due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Newhook shared the team lead for both goals (19) and points (42) through 34 games and was just seven points shy of compiling one of the top five all-time campaigns by a freshman, according to Clark. The 19-year-old was named the Hockey East Rookie of the Year.
Boston College ended the season with a 24-8-2 record and ranked No. 5 in the USCHO.com Division I rankings.
The NHL season is suspended indefinitely due to the COVID-19 outbreak, and while the league hopes it will eventually be able to resume and conclude the 2019-20 campaign, that's far from a foregone conclusion. This week and next, we're breaking down some of the major storylines that hang in the balance.
We're a week into the NHL's pause to combat the coronavirus. So far we've bypassed 54 games in the 2019-20 schedule. Of those 54, few would have commanded our attention quite like the Colorado Avalanche-Vancouver Canucks meeting in Denver, slated for March 13, a day after the hiatus kicked in.
Colorado, led by MVP candidate Nathan MacKinnon, sat two points out of first in the Central Division. Vancouver, led by the ever-entertaining Elias Pettersson, was about to engage in a fight for one of three playoff spots in the Pacific or one of two wild cards. The heat was on. Adding fuel to the fire was the fact that both teams employ a fantastic young defenseman; one of them, Cale Makar or Quinn Hughes, was likely to capture the Calder Trophy as rookie of the year.
The Calder's been awarded 87 times. Only 11 defensemen have won it and on only two occasions (1962-63 and 1966-67) have defensemen finished first and second in voting.
Icon Sportswire / Getty Images
Though sports award debates are low on society's priority list right now, Makar versus Hughes stands as one of the biggest what-ifs of the paused season in part because their Calder cases were remarkably similar.
The stretch drive may have moved the needle in one direction, or, in an unlikely scenario, towards Chicago Blackhawks sniper Dominik Kubalik. Who knows. Instead, we have 68 games of Hughes, 20, the two-way wizard with ice in his veins, and 57 games of Makar, 21, the offensive dynamo who's an equally cool customer. Both displayed composure well beyond their years in 2019-20, as well as enough skill to earn semi-permanent spots on the highlight reel.
Hughes recorded 53 points, Makar 50. When you adjust for games played, though, there's little separating the two in a few high-level categories:
PLAYER
TOI/GP
POINTS/GP
SHOT ATTEMPTS %
EXPECTED GOALS %
Makar
21:01
0.88
52.8
50.9
Hughes
21:53
0.78
53.3
48.0
Source: Natural Stat Trick
So, Hughes played 52 extra seconds a night; Makar was a more efficient point producer; Hughes had the slightly better even-strength shot differential; and Makar had the superior even-strength expected goals differential. In terms of zone starts, Hughes started more of his shifts in the offensive zone, but not by a wide margin (65.8% versus Makar's 63.8%). Back and forth. Up and down. No jarring differences between the two profiles.
There was also no major gap in teammate talent. Sure, the Avalanche are a Stanley Cup contender offering a strong support system, and the Canucks aren't there yet. But the three most common forwards to play with Makar (MacKinnon, Gabriel Landeskog, and Mikko Rantanen) aren't head and shoulders above Hughes' trio (J.T. Miller, Pettersson, and Bo Horvat). Meanwhile, the blue-liners were, on aggregate, paired with comparable partners:
PLAYER
PARTNER 1
PARTNER 2
PARTNER 3
Makar
Graves (501 mins)
Girard (170 mins)
Zadorov (143 mins)
Hughes
Tanev (724 mins)
Myers (348 mins)
Stetcher (64 mins)
Source: Natural Stat Trick
(If you really want a winner, Makar held the slight advantage in the teammate department thanks to MacKinnon and Girard. But, again, a very small win.)
If you peel the advanced-stat discussion back further, it gets even murkier.
Based on Natural Stat Trick's Corsi For Relative percentage metric, the Canucks tipped the shot-attempt counter in their favor far more often when Hughes was on the ice than when he was on the bench. Hughes graded out with an impressive plus-7.4% rating, which ranked him third among all Vancouver players. Makar had a plus-2.9% rating, suggesting Hughes had a more significant effect on his team's ability to attack and defend than Makar.
As for special-teams deployment, both rookies averaged almost four minutes per game on the power play and didn't kill penalties. Hughes put up six more points on the PP (25 to 19), but that comparison is a bit misleading because of the aforementioned 11-game gap. Plus, Makar ended up with more even-strength points (31-28), which are generally harder earned.
Icon Sportswire / Getty Images
All things considered - including the eye test - the Calder race is airtight. Based on his all-around ability, Hughes probably has the tiniest edge on Makar, though award voting (and the debate process as a whole) is a completely subjective exercise. A vote for Makar is wholly justifiable.
Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the combined 125 games of Hughes and Makar (135 if you count Makar's marvellous 10-game debut in the 2018-19 playoffs) is that we've seen more than enough to label these kids special.
Fellow rookies like Kubalik, Victor Olofsson, Ilya Samsonov, Mackenzie Blackwood, Elvis Merzlikins, John Marino, Adam Fox, Ethan Bear, Nick Suzuki, and Martin Necas - to name 10 - all announced their arrival on the NHL scene. Hughes and Makar broke down the door and sprinted through it.
The Calgary Flames double-dipped into the college free-agent pool, signing defensemen Colton Poolman out of North Dakota and Connor Mackey from Minnesota State, the team announced Friday.
Both deals are one-year, entry-level contracts.
Poolman, 24, finished his senior year in 2019-20 with 17 points in 31 games.
Mackey, 23, registered 24 points in 36 games in his third NCAA season.
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey wants the Boston Bruins to pay their hourly and part-time employees affected by the NHL's hiatus.
"I just want them to act, I just want them to step up and do something," Healey told the Boston Herald's Marisa Ingemi on Thursday. "Do something for their workers. Every other (NHL) team has said they are going to provide financial support for hourly workers who have been hurt by this, and that runs the range of paying their salaries or paying for their living expenses … I just want them to act now."
Healey said she's received many calls from hourly workers amid the coronavirus pandemic, some of whom are TD Garden employees.
Boston is indeed the only NHL team that hasn't committed as an organization to compensate the relevant workers in the wake of the postponement of the season.
Brad Marchand and several of his teammates have donated to a fundraising campaign started by 13-year-old Bruins fan Gunnar Larson. The GoFundMe page has raised more than $36,000.
On March 13, the Bruins said they were "actively exploring support options and will have further information in the coming days," but the team hasn't responded to requests regarding the matter since then, according to Ingemi.
Jeremy Jacobs - the club's chairman and the owner of food service and hospitality company Delaware North - and his family have an estimated net worth of $3.2 billion, according to Forbes.
The Arizona Coyotes dipped into the college free-agent pool Friday, inking forward Nate Sucese to a one-year, entry-level contract.
Sucese played four seasons at Penn State, becoming the school's all-time leading scorer last November.
The 23-year-old produced 11 goals and 38 points across 34 games in his senior campaign, helping the Nittany Lions win the Big Ten regular-season championship.
He produced 61 goals and 140 points in 147 NCAA contests.
