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.
NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly is leaving the door wide open on how things may look if the league's suspended regular season ultimately resumes.
"I'm really not positioned a week into this to rule out anything," Daly said, according to The Canadian Press. "The possibilities on how this plays out and what we're able to come up with as an end to the 2019-20 season is almost endless."
The NHL, NHLPA, and Board of Governors have explored numerous scheduling options since everything came to a halt March 13 due to the global coronavirus pandemic. However, Daly recently said one of the league's top priorities is ensuring the 2020-21 schedule isn't compromised.
Daly has worked for the NHL since 1996, a tenure that's featured two labor-related work stoppages, but he admitted the league's current circumstances are unprecedented.
"I've never seen anything quite like it," Daly said. "There was serious concern about the situation. But I certainly didn't see it unfolding and unraveling as quickly as it did from the point that we ended that meeting to having to pause the season roughly one week later.
"It was quick."
The NHL doesn't have a clear timeline on when things may resume but announced earlier this week that all players must self-quarantine through at least March 27.
On Tuesday, an unidentified Ottawa Senator was the first NHL player to test positive for COVID-19.
The New York Rangers signed forward Austin Rueschhoff to a two-year entry-level contract, theScore has learned. The deal starts in 2020-21.
Rueschhoff, a 22-year-old right winger out of Western Michigan University, scored 12 goals and added 14 assists in 36 games this past season. The 6-foot-7, 230-pound junior had a plus-9 rating and 24 penalty minutes.
An undrafted free agent, Rueschhoff attended an NHL development camp each of the past three summers - the Toronto Maple Leafs in 2017, St. Louis Blues in 2018, and Columbus Blue Jackets in 2019.
Rueschhoff, a native of Wentzville, Missouri, scored a goal in his final college game, an 8-4 win over the University of Miami (Ohio) on March 7.
Five days later, on March 12, the NCAA canceled all remaining winter and spring competition in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
WMU had been scheduled to face off against St. Cloud State University in Kalamazoo, Michigan, during the NCHC quarterfinal round last weekend.
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On Thursday, we looked at the teams that could benefit from the NHL season being suspended by getting their injured players back into the lineup should the season resume this summer.
While that could act as a silver lining for some teams, there are a number of others that would find this break detrimental to their Stanley Cup chances.
Top teams
Steve Babineau / National Hockey League / Getty
There are a few avenues the league is exploring for a potential revamped playoff format, each of which presents issues that would negatively impact the top teams.
An expanded playoff format would increase the likelihood that a lower seed catches fire at the right time and goes on a run. Teams with a second chance can be very dangerous and they wouldn't be playing with the same sort of pressure on them that the top seeds - think the Tampa Bay Lightning (6-1) - would be burdened with.
Moving to a best-of-five playoff could create more volatility and leave a lot more room for variance. The better team will usually win out over the course of seven games, but shortening a series by two increases the possibility of a hot goalie stealing a series or a team being snakebit by bad puck luck.
Healthy teams
While the suspended season could benefit certain teams by allowing them to get their injured players back, as we mentioned Thursday, those clubs' already healthy opponents would, as a result, be negatively impacted, especially two teams in particular.
The Dallas Stars (18-1) would draw the short straw in the Western Conference. In an already loaded Central Division, they'd have to face the St. Louis Blues with Vladimir Tarasenko, and the Colorado Avalanche with a fully healthy roster for the first time since October.
Streaking teams
Zak Krill / National Hockey League / Getty
The suspension would offer a blank slate to teams if the season does resume. While the first 70 games would potentially determine playoff seeding, a three-month layoff could be a crippling blow to clubs that were really starting to find their game.
The Flyers (9-1) and Vegas Golden Knights (8-1) are two teams that could find this break detrimental. Philadelphia had won nine of 10 games before the season was suspended and looked like a lock to take over the Metropolitan Division's top spot, peaking at the right time.
Vegas had won 11 of 13 and were perched comfortably atop the Pacific Division, with the teams below them stumbling. The Knights were finally living up to their billing as clear favorites to come out of the division, but a fresh start negates all the momentum they had built up.
Fringe teams
Should the season resume at some point, one of the more prevalent suggestions is for the league to implement a standard 16-team playoff based on current standings, using points percentage as the tiebreaker, given not all teams have played the same amount of games.
If the NHL were to employ this logic, any futures ticket on the Columbus Blue Jackets (100-1) or Winnipeg Jets (50-1) would be a losing one. Despite currently sitting in wild-card spots, both teams would find themselves on the outside of the playoff picture based on points percentage. The Blue Jackets would miss out by .009%, and the Jets by .001%. Bless their souls if that winds up being the case.
Alex Moretto is a sports betting writer for theScore. A journalism graduate from Guelph-Humber University, he has worked in sports media for over a decade. He will bet on anything from the Super Bowl to amateur soccer, is too impatient for futures, and will never trust a kicker. Find him on Twitter @alexjmoretto.
The Washington Wizards and Capitals will entertain fans with video game simulations while finishing the rest of their regular seasons virtually.
Monumental Sports and Entertainment, the company that owns the NBA and NHL franchises, will broadcast video game simulations of both team's previously scheduled matchups that have been postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak. The games will air during every suspended contest's original time slot.
Wizards games will be simulated on NBA 2K20, with the first one scheduled for Saturday at 7 p.m. ET against the Milwaukee Bucks. The Capitals' first simulation will be broadcast at 7 p.m. ET on Tuesday, when they'll face the St. Louis Blues on NHL 20.
Both the basketball and hockey broadcasts will span an hour and be shown on NBC Sports Washington and the Monumental Sports Network. The NHL games will also feature live commentary from Capitals TV announcers on NBC Sports Washington.
"We know that fans are as disappointed as we are not to be able to watch our favorite teams on a nightly basis," Zach Leonsis, the company's senior vice president of strategic initiatives, said in a statement.
"We hope that these fun and engaging video game simulations will entertain our fans and help provide a greater sense of normalcy during these challenging times," he continued. "We hope that when people tune in and watch these simulated games, they will be able to enjoy some friendly competitive play from the comforts of their own home."
The Phoenix Suns have also been using NBA 2K20 to play out their postponed contests. However, they aren't doing a full simulation, and real players are controlling the team and its opponents.
