One year later: What’s changed for the Hurricanes since COVID-19 shut down the NHL
Jordan Martinook recalls being concerned, but not overly concerned, on the Carolina Hurricanes’ team flight back to Raleigh from New Jersey.
It was March 12, 2020. The night before, the NBA announced it was shutting down. On March 12, the NHL did the same, commissioner Gary Bettman announcing a “pause” in play because of the gathering storm that was a coronavirus pandemic that would worsen each day, creating a deepening, vastly troubling health crisis.
“I don’t think I took it seriously enough,” Martinook, a Canes forward, said on a media call Thursday. “When we were flying back it was kind of like, ‘OK, we’re going to shut down for a week and then we’ll back at it. That’ll be it.’
“Obviously that was not the case. It was like, ‘Bang, you’re stopping.’”
The NHL would play again in 2020, but only after the players were good with it and worked out facets of an extension on the league’s collective bargaining agreement. The 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs began in August. The playoffs were held in two hub cities, Toronto and Edmonton, in protective bubbles with tightened security. Some 33,000 coronavirus tests were conducted and the games played in empty arenas.
Finally, a 2020 Stanley Cup champion was determined. The Tampa Bay Lightning won, the players lifted the cup and skated about a quiet Rogers Place in Edmonton.
“We were able to do business. It was all harder,” Bettman said Thursday on a media call. “We made decisions on real time ... and tried to make the best decisions.”
While there was hockey, there was so much uncertainty and unknowns about the virus. COVID-19 positive test rates soared. The death rate soared. When would it peak? No one knew.
The U.S. unemployment rate also soared as people lost their jobs and the ability to care for their families. Others could not see family members with the fear of spreading the virus.
“It’s sad to look back and see how many lives it affected all around the world,” Canes defenseman Jaccob Slavin said Thursday.
The Canes had won 5-2 on March 10 in Detroit, their third straight victory. Rookie Morgan Geekie was the talk of the team, scoring three goals in his first two NHL games. The Canes were in a playoff wild-card spot. Goalie Petr Mrazek was back from injury. It was all good for the Canes.
But the novel coronavirus was spreading across North America. The first positive case was reported in Wake County on March 3. On March 10, Gov. Roy Cooper declared a state of emergency for North Carolina.
Time to pause the NHL, NBA
While in Detroit, the Canes had stayed at the Westin Book Cadillac hotel. In the hotel before them had been the Utah Jazz of the NBA, in town to play the Pistons.
Then, it all started to rapidly shut down. On March 11, Rudy Gobert of the Jazz tested positive for COVID-19 and the Jazz-Oklahoma City Thunder game was called off minutes before tipoff that night. The NBA quickly moved to suspend its season.
“It was clear that sooner or later we were going to have a positive test. It was time to take a pause,” Bettman said.
In Detroit, John Forslund, the Canes’ television play-by-play man, had stayed in Gobert’s hotel room after the player checked out. After the return from New Jersey, where the Canes were to play the Devils on March 12, Forslund had to go into a two-week quarantine in the basement of his home, unsure what would come next: sickness, nothing.
“It was like being hit with a ton of bricks,” Forslund said Friday. “It directly hit me and I think I could quickly understand the ramifications of what was to come. It was an anxious time.”
Forslund would be fine physically but his life, like others in the pandemic, would change. His contract with the team expired at the end of June 2020 and a new one could not be agreed upon, leading to his departure from the franchise. When the Canes next played a game, in the 2020 postseason in Toronto, Mike Maniscalco had taken over Forslund’s job.
“With respect to people who were sick or lost their lives, we’ve all had issues, we’ve all had our lives turned upside down,” Forslund said. “Everyone has been touched by this, but on a personal level it was a complete about-face.”
Forslund, once so big a part of the Hurricanes’ brand, has since been hired by the Seattle Kraken, the newest NHL expansion team, to be their TV play-by-play man.
“It’s hard to believe so much has happened in a year,” Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour said this week. “Forget about hockey. Just in general. That seems like years and years ago.
“It just felt surreal. I remember we were in New Jersey and the basketball got canceled that night and then it was just kind of of ‘What’s going on?’ Then, the dominoes started falling everywhere. No one knew what was coming next.”
The Canes would play in the 2020 postseason, sweeping the New York Rangers before losing to the Boston Bruins in Toronto. Another wait began as NHL coaches and players could only guess when the 2020-21 season would begin or how many games would be played.
The answers: Jan. 13 and 56 regular-season games. There would be four new divisions, with all games played within the division. The Hurricanes became a Central Division team.
Coronavirus a daily concern
Bettman said Thursday it was likely the league would return to a more traditional alignment in 2021-22, noting, “We did what we had to do this year to play.”
COVID continues to be a daily concern for the NHL. The Canes have had six players on the NHL’s COVID-19 protocol list and unavailable to play, including team captain Jordan Staal.
Masks and social distancing are a must for the players off the ice. No more team meals. More isolation on the road.
Only recently has the NHL protocol list been significantly pared down -- five players on Thursday.
“It’s almost hard to believe we’ve all been at this for a year and we’re still not done,” Bettman said. “Yes, there’s light at the end of the tunnel, but also this isn’t a time to let our guard down or our vigilance.
“With the test results coming in we have had to live this day to day. We’ve had to react to things on a day to day basis. ... Our goal was to power on through this as best we could understanding health and safety had to be the No. 1 priority. And it always was.”
Honoring health care, frontline workers
With Gov. Cooper easing COVID restrictions in North Carolina for indoor events, the Canes were allowed to start bringing fans back in PNC Arena in a limited capacity last week. Attendance was a little more than 2,900 fans for the Canes’ latest home games. Small, but a start.
“The fans are the backbone of any sports league,” Martinook said. “They bring what’s good to the game.”
With the fans back, the Canes again began having a postgame Storm Surge after victories at PNC Arena, but with a different twist. They clap and then raise their sticks to salute a local health professional or frontline worker who is being honored on the scoreboard -- as Martinook put it, “Those who have kept the world going.”
What a year.
“It’s crazy,” Slavin said Thursday.”It seems like the year took forever but also flew by at the same time. Obviously, there was a lot of quality time with the family, so that was nice, but in terms of the hockey world and going into a playoff bubble to where we are now with being able to have fans in the building, it’s exciting.”
This story was originally published March 12, 2021 at 10:59 AM with the headline "One year later: What’s changed for the Hurricanes since COVID-19 shut down the NHL."
