LA Kings coach Todd McLellan recalled the “eerie” feeling of playing the NHL’s final game before pausing its season. They hosted Ottawa on March 11, right after the NBA halted a game due to Rudy Gobert’s COVID-19 symptoms. “As soon as that happened, the mood changed in the locker room. It became a little more eerie. Players’ minds were somewhere else,” he said. While two Ottawa players have since tested positive for COVID-19, McLellan said no one with the Kings' group has "showed any symptoms."
Headline: "Duck builds chicken coop." Anaheim's Ryan Getzlaf has constructed a coop at his house during the NHL's season pause. But the veteran put that postponement in perspective on a video call. “We’re not going to complain about pausing our season when there are people dying and life is going on as it is," he said. "We’ve had lockouts before. It’s just another thing in our life we have to deal with professionally. But the biggest worry for us is keeping our families safe."
The NHL hasn’t yet decided to postpone or cancel the NHL Draft, scheduled for Montreal on June 26 and 27, and the NHL Awards, which were expected to return to Las Vegas in June. It's assumed any season restart would cause a shift in the offseason schedule. “No decisions yet,” deputy commissioner Bill Daly tells ESPN, as the league enters its third calendar week of a “paused” regular season.