On March 12, the day after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for COVID-19 and the NBA postponed its season, the NHL Board of Governors held an emergency conference call to determine the league’s course of action. The most urgent business was completed without debate: After offering his recommendation that the NHL promptly suspend games too, commissioner Gary Bettman opened the floor for objections.
“There wasn’t a peep,” one governor says. “It was silent.”
That was the easy part. The hard part involved all of the questions that came next: What were the financial implications of freezing a billion-dollar business?