Columbus Blue Jackets News Clips March 19, 2020 Columbus Blue Jackets PAGE 02 The Columbus Dispatch: View from John Forslund’s bunker: NHL playoffs still doable PAGE 03 The Columbus Dispatch: View from John Forslund’s bunker: Thank goodness for spring, and the phone PAGE 04 The Athletic: Blue Jackets may feel squeeze unless NHL can expand post-virus playoffs Cleveland Monsters/Prospects NHL/Websites PAGE 06 The Athletic: NHL’s Bill Daly: Playing a full 82-game season in 2020-21 is a top priority PAGE 10 The Athletic: Is this the end? 15 NHL players who might have played their last game PAGE 18 Sportsnet.ca: 31 Thoughts: NHL teams prepping for anything amid COVID-19 suspension The Columbus Dispatch: View from John Forslund’s bunker: NHL playoffs still doable By Michael Arace – March 17, 2020 On March 8, John Forslund, the television voice of the Carolina Hurricanes, checked into the Detroit hotel room that was vacated by Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert patient zero in American professional sports. Forslund is in self-quarantine in the finished basement of his Apex, North Carolina, home until Monday, March 23. He has showed no symptoms of COVID-19, known as novel coronavirus. The Dispatch is making daily checks on Forslund, a featured play-by-play telecaster for NHL games on NBC Sports. Here’s the latest installment of Johnny’s Bunker Report: Today, the subject is the playoffs. Forslund has had a lot of time by himself to think 168 hours, at last count and he’s plugged into NHL behind-the-scenes machinery. He has been mulling what’ll happen when the league gets back on the ice. "The season is halted," he said. "Whenever it resumes, whatever it looks like, it won’t resemble what has come before. It won’t connect to whatever’s happened previously. In Columbus’ case, maybe you get back a couple (of injured players, such as Cam Atkinson, Seth Jones and Oliver Bjorkstrand). I don’t know. Here in Carolina, maybe Dougie Hamilton (a Norris Trophy candidate with a broken leg) returns. "It’s how everyone plays on the other side that’s the real wild card. It’s like the last lockout year (2012- 13, when the season was shortened by a half). You just don’t know what teams are going to look like after a long layoff." One report said the league has asked NHL teams to keep arenas available through the end of July. "We don’t know how long it’s going to take for the health concerns to level off," Forslund said. "They’re going to do something different. I know they want to finish something, for whatever that’s worth. I think they’ll probably have to get rid of the rest of the regular season and go right into the playoffs." Forslund sees merit in an expanded playoff format such as: Have the seventh- through 10th-place teams play best-of-three, play-in series; truncate the first- and second-round series to best-of-five; and have a final four of best-of-sevens. Conceivably, if this tournament can get underway by the end of May then the Stanley Cup can be handed out before August. "The Blue Jackets have done a remarkable job just to be in the race," Forslund said. "Let Torts rally the troops and try to play their way in. It’d be fabulous television. Whenever it comes back, the country is going to be so happy for sports that everyone’s going to go crazy. "I don’t know if there’s enough time for that. Who knows?" And, lastly, no, Forslund has not found anything good to watch on TV. "I’ve been watching cable news," he said, "and it’s deplorable." The Columbus Dispatch: View from John Forslund’s bunker: Thank goodness for spring, and the phone By Michael Arace – March 18, 2020 On March 8, John Forslund, the television voice of the Carolina Hurricanes, checked into the Detroit hotel room that was vacated by Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert ― patient zero in American professional sports. Forslund is in self-quarantine in the finished basement of his Apex, North Carolina, home until Monday, March 23. He has showed no symptoms of COVID-19, known as novel coronavirus. The Dispatch is making daily checks on Forslund, a featured play-by-play telecaster for NHL games on NBC Sports. Here’s the latest installment of Johnny’s Bunker Report: Unseasonably cool temperatures are slowly giving way to springtime in the Raleigh area. Forslund welcomes the chance to get out of the basement, rein in his wandering thoughts and have conversations with his family and neighbors. They talk from either side of the yard. “It’s feeding time at the zoo and they’re letting the gorilla come out of the cage,” he said. “People come to watch from a distance. ‘Look! He talks!’ ” Forslund and his wife of 33 years, Natalie, have three children. Erika, 23, is a graduate student at Clemson University and works in the student affairs office there. Matt, 22, is a sophomore at Lebanon Valley College in Annville, Pennsylvania, outside Hershey; he’s a goaltender for the D-III Dutchmen. The youngest, Kara, 16, is a high school sophomore. Erika is staying put in South Carolina during spring break because her father is quarantined back in North Carolina. Matt’s college has shut down and he’s taking online classes at home. Kara’s high school has shut down. Forslund listens to them move around upstairs. Monday night, the three non-quarantined Forslunds watched a movie, and their laughs came hard and fast through the floorboards. “I don’t want to paint a picture of mental anguish here, but I wanted to sprint upstairs and say, ‘What are you guys watching?’” he said. “But I can’t do that. It bothered me enough that at 9 o’clock I just went to sleep.” Prior to his quarantine, Forslund went through nine days of airport terminals, flying time, production meetings and homework, homework, homework. He called seven games in seven cities. And then it all stopped. “Down here in the bunker I’ve been getting a lot of calls,” he said. “Columbus checks in every day, of course. Hello, Columbus! Everyone I work with has called: colleagues, broadcasters, a couple of coaches. Tripp (Tracy, the analyst on Canes’ telecasts) checks in every day. It takes up time and we laugh a lot. “There was a conference call with NBC (Tuesday). Nothing was discussed because there’s really nothing to discuss: We’re all on hold, just like everyone else. All of NBC Sports ― Al Michaels, Cris Collinsworth, all the NFL guys, all the golf people, all of the on-air talent ― was on the call. Around 150 people in all. Basically, the message was: Be ready, and when we can get back to it, we’ll get back to it.” The Athletic: Blue Jackets may feel squeeze unless NHL can expand post-virus playoffs By Aaron Portzline – March 18, 2020 COLUMBUS, Ohio — The NHL has discussed several scenarios for how it might handle what’s left of the 2019-20 season on the other side of the league’s pause for the COVID-19 pandemic. On Tuesday, some of the NHL’s top players weighed in with a plan that would have this year’s season resume in mid-July with playoffs carrying on well into September, which, of course, is training camp time in a typical season. There’s no way the NHL or its players can sign off on any of these ideas until the league gets a clear indication of when it can safely return to play. For now, the league is tentatively hopeful that a 45-day break, followed by two weeks for teams to reconvene and hold “training camps,” will allow a mid-May restart to the season. But that may be wishful thinking. And if you’re a Blue Jackets fan, you could look at it this way: The longer this pause lasts, the longer the odds are that the Blue Jackets will get to play games again this season. When the “pause” button was pressed on Thursday, the Blue Jackets held the second wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference, a highly respectable achievement given how they’ve been decimated by injuries this season. But if the NHL decides to go directly to the postseason and maintains its eight-teams-per-conference format, the Blue Jackets will almost certainly be left out in the cold. Why? The NHL would determine those eight teams by points percentage — not simply points accrued — because teams have not played an equal number of games. That would mean the New York Islanders (80 points in 68 games, .588) would get the No. 8 seed ahead of the Blue Jackets (81 points in 71 games, .579). The Jackets are tied with Toronto (third in the Atlantic), but the Leafs (28 regulation wins) would win the tiebreaker against Columbus (25). The Blue Jackets, who have overcome 419 man-games lost because of injury, could be out by .009 of a point. It’s even worse in the West, where Winnipeg — currently owners of the first wild-card — would get bumped two spots and out of the playoffs. The Jets (80 points in 71 games, .563) would finish behind Vancouver (78 points in 69 games, .565), Nashville (78 points in 69 games, .565) and Calgary (79 points in 70 games, .564). “You can’t punish a team that didn’t play as many games,” one source told The Athletic.