No NHL season finisher games will be held Thursday or Friday, with the association and its players choosing to follow the lead of other pro athletics in the wake of the Jacob Blake shooting while at the same time swearing to “cultivate more comprehensive and inviting conditions inside our fields, workplaces and past.”
The choice delays two Thursday games: New York Islanders-Philadelphia Flyers and Vegas Golden Knights-Vancouver Canucks. Friday’s games pitted the Tampa Bay Lightning against the Boston Bruins, trailed by the Colorado Avalanche versus the Dallas Stars.
NHL Postpones Playoff Games
The four gathering elimination round games will be rescheduled starting Saturday.The proclamation said that “the NHL underpins the Players’ choice” not to play. Sources had recently told ESPN’s Emily Kaplan that the sides had been in correspondence in the course of recent hours yet that the association would not start a stoppage except if there was a solid push from the players’ side.Many groups tweeted out help for their players after the choice was authoritatively declared, among them the Bruins, the Golden Knights, the Islanders and the Flyers.
“We expected to persevere, and I think this is the suitable type of activity,” Canucks chief Bo Horvat said. “I was unable to be prouder of our gathering of folks to think of this arrangement.” Vegas forward Ryan Reaves said he was battling with the choice of whether to pass on the Golden Knights’ season finisher game to fight racial shamefulness when he found players around the NHL had his back.
Reaves woke up Thursday to discover a book from Tampa Bay Lightning defenseman Kevin Shattenkirk, inciting a discussion that helped lead the NHL to defer four season finisher games more than two days. “That, I believe, was all the more impressive that the discussion began with white players on different groups needing to talk,” said Reaves, who is Black. “What’s more, I feel that is the most impressive thing that happened today. You see every one of us meeting up here.”
