When 31 general managers log on, in June or in the fall, to the NHL's first virtual draft, expect the proceedings to evoke the spirit of the Sidney Crosby sweepstakes - the last player bonanza the league held under such weird circumstances.

The upcoming draft shares a certain symmetry with the 2005 edition, and not only because touted top prospect Alexis Lafreniere - like Crosby - hails from the QMJHL's Rimouski Oceanic. Anomalous events will have forced the league to reschedule and relocate both drafts: to the Westin Hotel in downtown Ottawa, in the case of Crosby's entry to the league, and, presumably, to executives' home offices across the U.S. and Canada in this moment of physical distancing.

GMs in recent weeks have expressed objection to staging this draft in June, considering the 2019-20 season might yet resume in some form afterward. The typical selection process has been upended, sort of like it was when the overdue conclusion of a 10-month lockout forced the league to move the show on short notice to a muted conference room.

It was a peculiar setting for a transformative weekend in league history: July 30-31, 2005, when the Penguins capitalized on their luck in a free-for-all lottery by picking the superstar who's since led them to three Stanley Cups - and when several other storylines that would change the NHL were spoken into existence.

Ahead of the 2020 draft's particular unorthodoxy, let's relive some of those subplots from '05: the legendary batch of goalies selected, the crestfallen teams that shortly thereafter won the Cup anyway, the negation of a possible Crosby-Alex Ovechkin partnership, and more.

Penguins' odds pay off

With no 2004-05 standings from which to set a draft order, the NHL modified its rules for the 2005 lottery to give every team a weighted shot at the first overall pick - and the 17-year-old center who'd spent the span of the lockout racking up 168 points in the QMJHL.

The league conferred the best odds - three lottery balls in the draw - to the four teams that hadn't reached the last three postseasons or won any of the past four lotteries: Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Columbus, and the Rangers. (The Blue Jackets and Penguins drafted No. 1 in 2002 and 2003, respectively, but only after Florida earned and traded both picks.) Ten teams received two balls each for making one of those postseasons or winning one of those lotteries. The remainder of the league's clubs got a single ball apiece.

That distribution left Pittsburgh with a mere 6.25% (1-in-16) chance to earn the top selection, scarcely exceeding most other teams' odds of 2.08% (1-in-48) and undermining the belief of cynics and conspiracy theorists that the NHL rigged the lottery to save the Penguins from bankruptcy. Fortune smiled on Pittsburgh that July, while the Blue Jackets landed at sixth overall and the Sabres and Rangers fell out of the top 10.

The upshot of 2004

It was a stroke of luck that revived the Penguins and guaranteed the franchise would evolve into a perennial contender. But history might have unfolded differently if not for a previous setback.

The last time NHL hockey had been played, in 2003-04, the Penguins' 58 points constituted the worst regular-season total in the league. Yet despite a lottery format stacked heavily in favor of the last-place club, Pittsburgh lost the ensuing draw to the Capitals, who also jumped Chicago for the right to draft Ovechkin and, as a result, received only one ball in the Crosby raffle.

What twilight-zone scenario might have ensued had the Penguins won the 2004 lottery and selected Ovechkin, thereby enabling the Blackhawks to take Evgeni Malkin at No. 2 and leaving Washington without a foundational star? The Capitals, Sabres, Blue Jackets, and Rangers would have all seen their odds to land Crosby improve slightly, but imagine this: Maybe Pittsburgh's remaining two balls would have been sufficient to win again, empowering the Penguins to deploy Ovechkin on Crosby's wing for the duration of their careers.

Champs near the top

How's this for an only-in-2005 moment - an oddity befitting a unique draft. Two teams finished below .500 in '03-04 and received top-three picks that, achingly, didn't net them the generational talent available. Those clubs then combined to win the next two Stanley Cups, beating Pittsburgh to the prize even as Crosby became the NHL's first teenaged Art Ross Trophy winner.

Carolina and Anaheim lifted the Cup in 2006 and 2007, respectively, but each did so without its top '05 draftee on the roster. The Hurricanes dealt defenseman Jack Johnson, the No. 3 pick, to the Kings following their championship season - before Johnson left the University of Michigan to turn pro. Bobby Ryan, the Ducks' selection at No. 2, made his NHL debut in 2007-08 as GM Brian Burke's club set about defending its title.

Of all people, Darren Helm - a fifth-round pick at No. 132 - was the first player from the 2005 draft class to lift the Stanley Cup; he centered the Red Wings' fourth line during their triumphant postseason run in 2008. (Two other Detroit draftees from 2005, second-rounder Justin Abdelkader and fourth-rounder Mattias Ritola, each played a pair of games that season but didn't feature in the playoffs.)

Greatest goalie draft ever?

That statement is true in recent memory at minimum. The 2005 draft produced four current NHL starters - Carey Price (No. 5 overall), Tuukka Rask (No. 21), Jonathan Quick (No. 72) and Ben Bishop (No. 85) - but a simple list of names woefully undersells the merit of their collective efforts this past decade:

• Two of those goalies - Price and Rask - have each won a Vezina Trophy; Bishop has been a finalist on three occasions, and Quick twice.

• Quick won the Conn Smythe Trophy and the Stanley Cup in 2012 and backstopped Los Angeles to another championship in 2014.

• Rask helped the Bruins reach the final in 2013 and 2019; Bishop did the same with the Lightning in 2015.

• Price's astounding .972 save percentage - he allowed three goals in five games - led Canada to gold at Sochi in 2014 during the last best-on-best Olympic tournament.

• Bishop, Price, and Rask each boast one NHL season with a save percentage greater than .930, marks that land in the top 25 all time.

• Rask led the NHL in Goals Saved Above Average when the league halted the 2019-20 season. Bishop, now playing in Dallas, ranked fifth; he was tops in that category last season.

The crop of goalies drafted in 2012 is comparable in quality and depth. Andrei Vasilevskiy (No. 19 overall) was the 2018-19 Vezina recipient; Connor Hellebuyck (No. 130) is favored to win this season; Matt Murray (No. 83) is a two-time Stanley Cup champion; Frederik Andersen (No. 87) can generally be counted upon across 60-plus starts per year. But the netminding alumni of Ottawa's Westin draft in 2005 have set a formidably high standard.

Surprise success stories

Crosby, Anze Kopitar (the No. 11 pick in 2005), and Paul Stastny (No. 44) are first, second, and third in their draft class in career scoring, a telltale measure of sustained excellence. Keith Yandle would have surely been selected far earlier than 105th overall if any front office figured he'd rise to fourth on that leaderboard.

In a sense, Yandle, the slick, durable Panthers defenseman who hasn't missed a game in 11 years, is characteristic of the 2005 draft as a whole. Players taken all over the board have distinguished themselves in unexpected ways. The class of 2005 includes:

• Another renowned hockey ironman in Cogliano, the No. 25 overall pick who appeared in 830 consecutive regular-season games from 2007-18. That's the seventh-longest run in NHL history; Yandle is fourth at 866 games and counting, with two spots between him and Doug Jarvis' decades-old benchmark of 964.

• A Stanley Cup hero selected last overall. Hornqvist, the 230th pick, scored the title-winning goal when Pittsburgh knocked off Nashville - the team that drafted him - in 2017.

• The NHL's all-time shortest skater in 5-foot-4 Nathan Gerbe. The No. 142 pick stands one inch taller than Roy Worters, a Hall of Fame goalie from the pre-Original Six era.

• Several top defensemen selected after the first round: Marc-Edouard Vlasic (No. 35), the only player from this class aside from Kopitar and Cogliano who's eclipsed 1,000 games played; Anton Stralman (No. 216), the lone seventh-rounder beyond Hornqvist still in the league; and Letang (No. 62), the six-time All-Star whom Pittsburgh drafted one pick after fellow blue-liner Michael Gergen, a future ECHLer who last played in 2012.

The Capitals comparison

It's worth contrasting the Penguins' headlining hauls from 2004 and 2005 - Malkin and Crosby - with those of Washington, their eternal adversary in the Metropolitan Division. One year after winning the Ovechkin lottery, the Capitals were awarded the No. 14 pick and selected hulking defenseman Sasha Pokulok. He never made the NHL and has played in Quebec's Ligue Nord-Americaine de Hockey since 2012.

Pokulok, to his credit, tore up the LNAH with 60 points in 36 games this season; the French-language Journal de Montreal recently called him the semi-pro circuit's answer to Bobby Orr. It's fair to wonder how his inability to develop as the Capitals once envisioned - a shortfall attributable in part to concussions - hindered the club's championship trajectory. Might Ovechkin have come closer to breaking through before 2018 with the help of another impact teammate?

At least Washington emerged from the lockout with Ovi. At third overall in 2004 and seventh overall in 2005, Chicago selected Cam Barker and Jack Skille, respectively, two players whose journeyman NHL careers rate as disappointments against the expectations of their draft positions. Only the arrivals of Jonathan Toews (No. 3 in 2006) and Patrick Kane (No. 1 in 2007) turned the Blackhawks around, showing - as Pittsburgh did with Crosby - that if a team is bad enough for long enough, it might eventually stumble into a draft worth remembering.

Nick Faris is a features writer at theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Find out the latest on COVID-19's impact on the sports world and when sports are returning by subscribing to Breaking News push notifications in the Sports and COVID-19 section.

Brian Burke approves of the proposal to expand the playoffs for just this season, but he's concerned about the risks associated with a return involving 24 clubs.

"Well, this year I say yes," the former longtime NHL executive said Thursday on Sportsnet's "Tim & Sid" when asked how he'd respond if someone pitched him on the reported 24-team plan. "Okay, if you look at the alternatives, the ideal thing is you finish the regular season. Then you know the proper order of finish, you've got the order of selection in the draft, all of those ... picks are sorted out. Okay, but we can't do that. We're not going to be able to finish the season, so what's the next best thing? This year (it's) to expand the playoffs.

"Now, I've been cynical and skeptical about our ability to play," Burke continued. "I remain that way. I think this is too many teams. I think it's going to almost guarantee that we have an issue with this virus, but if they can pull this off, fantastic - this year only. My prediction is this is going to open the door for expanded playoffs going forward, which I'm vehemently opposed to."

Burke commended the league and the players' union for coming up with the 24-team format under these circumstances and said he hopes it happens, but he has doubts about the ability to adequately test for COVID-19 upon a potential resumption of the season.

"(In terms of) the testing that we're doing right now, there's not enough of it and it's not accurate enough," he said, adding, "You're going to have to test these players every day. There's going to be a regular roster of players, plus black aces, plus trainers, plus coaches, plus management people. It's 50 (people) per team without families. That's 50 tests per team per day (and) 24 teams. It's a big undertaking and I hope they can pull it off."

The NHLPA's executive board began voting on the 24-team proposal Thursday night, as first reported by Sportsnet's Chris Johnston. The results aren't expected until Friday.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Find out the latest on COVID-19's impact on the sports world and when sports are returning by subscribing to Breaking News push notifications in the Sports and COVID-19 section.

The top four clubs in each NHL conference wouldn't just be playing meaningless games against each other to prep for their subsequent playoff matchups.

Under the 24-team playoff proposal the NHL and the NHLPA are reportedly discussing, the eight best teams will jockey for seeding even while being guaranteed a playoff spot, reports Sportsnet's Chris Johnston.

In the prospective plan, the Boston Bruins, Tampa Bay Lightning, Washington Capitals, and Philadelphia Flyers would play a round robin against each other in the East, while the St. Louis Blues, Colorado Avalanche, Vegas Golden Knights, and Dallas Stars would do so as well in the West.

These games would help determine how those teams are seeded No. 1 through No. 4 when the playoffs begin, according to Johnston, who cautioned that the plan still hasn't been finalized or approved.

It was reported Wednesday that the format would be organized by conference standings and that the top four seeds in each conference would play a three-game tuneup tournament. However, it wasn't previously clear whether those contests would carry any weight.

In the proposed postseason structure, the 16 other teams would take part in bracketed best-of-five play-in series to determine their next opponents.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

Find out the latest on COVID-19's impact on the sports world and when sports are returning by subscribing to Breaking News push notifications in the Sports and COVID-19 section.

Common sense may prevail when it comes to contracts that are scheduled to conclude at the end of next month.

The NHL intends to agree on a slide with the NHLPA that would extend all contracts through the end of the 2019-20 season, an NHL source told The Athletic's Michael Russo.

This would apply to NHL players in the final years of their deals, as well as minor leaguers on two-way contracts.

However, whether it will apply to coaches and other team employees remains to be seen, because they don't have a union of their own.

"The dynamic is different without collective representation," the source told Russo.

June 30 is traditionally the final day of the league year before the new one begins July 1. While the league and the players' union are reportedly making progress on a 24-team playoff format, a timetable for the NHL's return hasn't yet been determined.

St. Louis Blues captain Alex Pietrangelo, Arizona Coyotes sniper Taylor Hall, and Washington Capitals goaltender Braden Holtby are among the league's pending unrestricted free agents.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

The NHL appears to be making progress in determining the parameters of its eventual return, as Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman reported Wednesday that the league and the players' union are working toward a 24-team playoff format based on points percentage within conference standings.

Details are limited, and the proposal still needs team and player approval before the league can move forward. We do know that under this structure, the top four seeds in each conference would get byes, while teams seeded fifth through 12th would be placed in conference brackets and clash in best-of-five, play-in series.

The winners of theses play-in series would each advance to face a corresponding top-four seed in a best-of-seven clash. For example, the winner of the clash between No. 5 and No. 12 would play the No. 4 seed, while the winner of No. 8 versus No. 9 would play the team atop the conference standings.

It's different, but it's playoff hockey. After months of uncertainty, we'll surely take what we can get. With a faint light beginning to appear at the end of the tunnel, let's explore which of the potential play-in series would be the most intriguing.

Penguins (5) vs. Canadiens (12)

This is a major mismatch based on season stats, as the Canadiens have the fewest points of any team that would qualify under the expanded format. They do, however, possess the ultimate X-factor: goaltender Carey Price. He's far removed his 2015 MVP form, but the 32-year-old is still capable of winning games by himself. He also owns a combined .922 save percentage over his last three playoff appearances. Could he get hot enough to win three of five games? We're certainly not ruling it out.

The Penguins, meanwhile, are always one of the last teams anyone wants to meet in the playoffs. They're dangerous at even strength, and their lack of power-play success so far this season is not indicative of the top unit's talent. Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin are as potent as ever, and Pittsburgh, after being ravaged by injuries all season, should finally be able to ice a healthy roster following a lengthy layoff. That's a scary thought for the rest of East's playoff teams.

Flames (8) vs. Jets (9)

It's a shame this potential series would have to proceed without fans, as Calgary and Winnipeg boast some of the most electric playoff atmospheres in the sport. Still, spectators or not, this series, on paper, projects to be one of the most tightly contested of the play-in tournament.

The Flames and Jets have both ridden highs and lows all season, with each team battling bouts of inconsistency and weaknesses in certain areas of the roster. That said, Calgary and Winnipeg both have multiple game-breakers capable of dominating a shortened series. How will Matthew Tkachuk set the physical tone after going months without agitating anybody? Can Blake Wheeler and Mark Scheifele outduel Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan? Will Connor Hellebuyck's Vezina-calibre regular-season form carry over after such a lengthy hiatus?

Let's hope we find out.

Maple Leafs (8) vs. Blue Jackets (9)

The Maple Leafs and Blue Jackets could not be further apart in terms of roster construction. One team is built around a deep group of star forwards primed to outscore anybody, while the other is a relentlessly hard-working group always ready to systematically frustrate opponents. Yet here they are, essentially deadlocked in the Eastern Conference standings and on the verge of a potential playoff meeting. Which team's style is better suited to a shortened series with virtually no margin for error?

After Game 7 losses in back-to-back seasons at the hands of the Boston Bruins - who would, of course, face the winner of this series - Toronto's 2019-20 campaign has been all about playoff progress since Day 1. The players made no mistake promoting that narrative, either, often looking disengaged for long stretches of underwhelming regular-season play. Perhaps the arrival of the postseason could be the jolt the Maple Leafs need to finally resemble the contenders many expected them to be.

The Blue Jackets, on the other hand, surprisingly hung around the playoff picture despite losing major star power last offseason. Columbus improbably rode some white-hot goaltending to stay in the mix, but the team should get Seth Jones, Cam Atkinson, and potentially Josh Anderson back from injury in time for the playoffs. In addition to those reinforcements, we all know head coach John Tortorella will have his crew ready to play. Just ask the 2019 Tampa Bay Lightning.

Oilers (5) vs. Blackhawks (12)

First things first: The Blackhawks should be extremely grateful if the playoffs are indeed expanded. Chicago had lost six more games than it won before the league halted play, and the squad wasn't particularly impressive in any team metrics. There are major revenue implications in including the Windy City's hockey-mad market in any playoff format, so we'll let it slide and just enjoy the show. Plus, the slight possibility of Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews catching lightning in a bottle for one last deep playoff run is incredibly intriguing.

But the real reason to get excited about this matchup is Connor McDavid playing in meaningful games. The world's most dynamic player has only 13 playoff contests under his belt since the Oilers drafted him in 2015, and it's fair to assume the hockey world is ready to watch him perform on the biggest stage, even if it's not under the traditional format. Watching him and Leon Draisaitl - the NHL's leading scorer at the time of the pause - go on a run in the wide-open Western Conference would be a treat.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.

As with most things in the world right now, the short-term future of pro sports is murky. While some sports in some parts of the world have resumed, others remain suspended indefinitely. Nobody knows for sure when, or in what form, they'll be back.

It seems evident that when sports do return, they'll do so without fans in attendance. We've already seen that happen with pro baseball in South Korea, and with pro wrestling, MMA, and NASCAR in the United States. Germany's top soccer league, the Bundesliga, returned with fan-less matches last weekend. Until a vaccine or a provably effective COVID-19 treatment becomes widely available, cramming tens of thousands of potential spreaders into a single venue won't be tenable.

That will present a strange new environment for everyone involved in pro sporting events, from players to coaches to officials to broadcasters to the fans watching from home. The live audience is what turns a game into the interactive, operatic spectacle we know and love. It's right there in the description: Spectator sports. What is a spectator sport without spectators? At what point does it stop being the thing we recognize, and become an altogether different entity?

In trying to conceptualize the new sports reality, I've found myself thinking a lot about those old NBA promos - the ones that open on a shot of an empty arena before reconstructing an iconic postseason play, piece by piece, player by player. The fans are last to materialize, and the moment feels incomplete until that final addition. Then the whole scene vanishes as quickly as it appeared, leaving only the empty gym once again.

I always found something haunting about the idea of these incredible, historic moments taking place against a silent backdrop of vacant seats. It felt like a brief glimpse into an alternate reality in which we'd decided not to imbue sports with meaning. There's a reason LeBron James initially reacted to the prospect of playing in empty arenas by dismissing it out of hand.

Those ads probably wouldn't feel out of place if they ran tomorrow. They speak simultaneously to what we're currently missing, and what we'll be gaining - and yet still lacking - when sports return.

It's not impossible to imagine what sports without fans will look or sound like. The difficult thing will be trying to reconcile the idea of a sporting event that looks and sounds like a scrimmage with one that ostensibly carries monumental stakes. Will those stakes resonate in the same way for the players or their homebound fans? Can players perform at the same level without a crowd there to pump them full of adrenaline? If a three falls and there's nobody there to cheer it ...

History provides us with some examples. The one most people might remember is the Orioles-White Sox game that was played in an empty Camden Yards in Baltimore just over five years ago, while protests raged throughout the city in the wake of Freddie Gray's death in police custody.

The players who participated in that game talked about the eeriness of the quiet. They were put off not only by the lack of reaction to big plays, but also by the absence of the ambient noise that had unconsciously become a staple of their experience.

"It's the same as waking up having coffee every day for five years and then waking up and having zero coffee, and kind of being dependent on that energy," then-Orioles catcher Caleb Joseph told The Athletic's Kaitlyn McGrath. "And then out of nowhere it's gone."

Back in 1989, Siena and Boston University played the North Atlantic Conference championship game in an empty arena because of a measles outbreak on Siena's campus.

"It was definitely an adjustment," Siena forward Tom Huerter told The Times Union's Mark Singelais of the game, which Siena won by one point to punch its ticket to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in school history. "I think the best description is it felt like playing in a preseason scrimmage, against a really good team."

We can also now draw on examples from our present-day situation.

The WWE - which was deemed an essential business by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis - has been taping matches in empty venues for weeks. The fan-less experience is particularly strange for pro wrestling, which is by definition more performative and more of a pure entertainment product than non-scripted spectator sports. When theatricality is the whole point, what are you supposed to do when the theater's empty?

With the performance greeted by silence, both the physical and dramatic components of the sport are rendered bizarre. The performers still play to a nonexistent crowd, complete with over-the-top walk-out introductions and pregnant pauses in dialogue for effect. It's like a dress rehearsal for a hammy stage production.

"You know they're there watching at home, and that's what you have to try and focus on," wrestler Adam Joseph Copeland, aka Edge, said on WWE's "After the Bell" podcast. "The performance for the people at home that are hopefully reacting the way that you would want them to within the arena."

The Korean Baseball Organization began its season last week against a similarly silent backdrop. Umpires and coaches wear protective masks, while cheerleaders and mascots dance in front of empty seats. In Incheon, the SK Wyverns tried to create the illusion of a home crowd by filling the outfield bleachers with rows of banners displaying fans wearing the team's hat. As if to add an element of realism, the fake fans are also depicted wearing protective face masks.

There are still a lot of practical questions to answer about how the games will be packaged when team sports return in North America.

Will they be played in smaller, more intimate facilities? That might take some of the strangeness out of the endeavor; the sounds of the game would otherwise echo through cavernous, empty stadiums and serve only to emphasize the quiet of the place. Other sports may borrow the KBO's cardboard-fan idea. Perhaps some will take it a step further and stage games in front of a green screen so broadcasts can show a digitized live audience.

Another unknown is whether arenas will still feature the work of game-ops staff. Will they pump in artificial crowd noise or music during the run of play? Without any of that, viewers are likely going to hear a lot of stuff they aren't used to hearing, from the otherwise obscured sounds of the game to things said in the heat of the moment: sideline play-calling, profane trash talk, and heated arguments with officials.

Maybe the participants will tone down their usual mouthiness. Or maybe they won't. Steph Curry suggested that games without background noise "might be something that's really appealing from a fan perspective, to get real up close and personal with what we do on the court."

Orioles and White Sox players and coaches said they could hear everything the other team was saying, on the field and in the dugout, be it cheering or heckling or strategizing. Hearing a coach bellowing instruction from the bench won't be a novel phenomenon to anyone who's ever watched a Tom Thibodeau-coached team play, but there's a different level of tactical transparency in a silent stadium. On the playing field or in the huddle during a timeout, teams will have to go to greater lengths to conceal their intentions. Baseball players holding their gloves in front of their mouths to discourage lip-reading won't be enough.

"I had to change my coaching style because I was kind of an emotive guy," former Siena coach Mike Deane told Singelais. "If there's nobody in the gym, and no noise to filter that, you've got to be a little different."

As for the broadcast, will commentators be on site or off? If it's the former, I can tell you - as someone who used to call Atlantic University Sport basketball games for Dalhousie campus radio in Halifax, Nova Scotia - that it's a strange, self-conscious feeling to be describing the scene on display in a quiet gym where all of the players and attendants can hear you. The players, meanwhile, have to try to focus on playing while essentially having their actions narrated back to them in real time.

"When I went in to pitch, I just heard (Orioles play-by-play announcer) Gary Thorne the whole time I was in my delivery," former Orioles closer Zack Britton told The Athletic's Dan Connolly and Dan Hayes of his relief appearance in empty Camden Yards. "I'd get my pitch (signal) and I could hear him say, 'Britton's coming set. And the pitch.' I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, Gary, can I just mute you right now? Because I hear everything you're saying.'"

Not all athletes have found that to be problematic, though. In fact, two fighters in UFC 249 earlier in May said they won their bouts in part because they overheard and heeded tactical suggestions from fighter-turned-broadcaster Daniel Cormier.

If the NBA and NHL return in the near future, they'll either jump directly to the playoffs or be in the midst of the home stretch of the regular season, with some playoff positions still to be decided. If MLB returns, chances are it will play in empty stadiums. That Orioles-White Sox game was just one early-season game out of 162. How will it feel to play in or watch a fan-less game to decide a playoff spot, or a series, or a championship? How do you generate the requisite level of intensity and tension for a contest of that magnitude without a crowd?

We often reference "playoff atmosphere," which connotes a particular energy in a venue that is equal parts sound and texture. When we think of memorable postseason games we think of crowds so loud that players and coaches can't properly communicate. People who dream of being pro athletes dream of performing miraculous physical feats in front of thousands of roaring fans. Imaginary plays pantomimed in the driveway or the backyard are customarily followed by, "And the crowd goes wild!"

There won't be any substitute for the goosebump-inducing thrill of a momentum-swinging run or a game-breaking play in front of a frenzied home crowd; the murmuring angst between pitches during a crucial, drawn-out at-bat; the roar after a successful penalty kill; the swelling sound as a visiting team lines up for a third down; the anticipatory hum as a play develops into a breakaway or an open 3-pointer; the cathartic explosion after a frantic sequence of events is punctuated by a goal or a dunk or a tape-measure home run. The gravity of these moments is communicated, in large part, by a crowd's reaction to them.

Maybe the biggest question in all this is one that has nothing to do with practicality and everything to do with emotional gratification. The special thing about sports spectatorship is that it's interactive; you feel like you have a role to play in the production, however small. That feeling may not persist when the interactive element is taken away.

And what about the communal element? A common refrain about the power of sports is that they bring people together. That's often meant figuratively, but there is, of course, a literal component as well, whether that means populating stadiums or going to friends' houses or packing into sweaty bars to take in the spectacle and react among fellow fans.

Will it feel the same to root for a local team if that team isn't even playing in the local market? Can a fan base collectively celebrate a victory if its members can't celebrate with each other in person? Can sports still bring people together on a spiritual level if they can't do so on a physical level?

And if not, then what, exactly, is left?

Joe Wolfond writes about basketball and tennis for theScore.

Copyright © 2020 Score Media Ventures Inc. All rights reserved. Certain content reproduced under license.