The first week of the new-look Hockey East men’s schedule didn’t go exactly as planned.
Amid all the uncertainty in the world and the largely unpredictable nature of the COVID-19 virus, that much already was excepted, especially heading into a season as unprecedented as this one, featuring a slew of new protocols and safety measures.
With teams on college campuses, albeit with drastically lower populations than usual, it was inevitable that cases would pop up and schedules would be altered.
But not to this extent, this fast.
After several postponements resulted in just two games over the league’s opening weekend, 14 of the next 26 games between now and Dec. 13 have been postponed.
Out of the 11 teams in Hockey East, UMass (1-0-1) and UConn (0-1-1) were the only ones that managed to play on opening weekend, as the teams were forced to reschedule after their initial opponents, Maine and Vermont, were put on pause.
After Vermont came out four days prior to the season’s puck drop and announced it was postponing all team activities until Dec. 18, Maine followed suit, but said it was postponing only the first series from its schedule and that Week 2 was still on.
On Tuesday, however, Maine announced it was pausing winter sports until Dec. 8, citing, “positive test results and close contacts among players, coaches and staff.”
“We love to see our Black Bears compete, but the health of our student-athletes, coaches, staff and communities comes first,” said Maine president Joan Ferrini-Mundy. “We are responding to test results and contact tracing to prevent the further spread of infection within athletics, throughout the university community and beyond.”
With the pause, all games between Nov. 25 and Dec. 8 now have been canceled.
Having already missed a series against UMass, the Black Bears now will miss two more series against UConn and Merrimack before they can set out on their season.
The university will re-evaluate the situation at the end of the pause, the release said.
“While this interruption will be difficult on our teams, it is in keeping with our premise that the health and safety of our community is the priority,” said Ken Ralph, director of Maine Athletics. “We will do all we can to positively engage our students in the safest way possible. We are grateful for the support we have received, and our teams look forward to returning to competition when it is deemed safe to do so.”
In addition to Maine, Northeastern also joined the Hockey East teams on pause list this week, canceling all games and practices for winter sports until Dec. 18.
The decision to pause came after “a small cluster of COVID-19 cases that led to quarantining athletes on five varsity teams,” the university announced on Tuesday.
NU director of athletics Jeff Konya said he is hopeful winter teams can resume practices in early December and launch abbreviated seasons once the pause is over.
In total, the Huskies will miss six scheduled league games during the pause, including a trio of series against UMass Lowell, Providence and Merrimack.
“When you’re making a decision of this magnitude, the number one priority is the wellness and safety of the student-athletes,” Konya said in the release. “Analyzing the facts as we know them right now, this decision gives us our best chance of conducting intercollegiate athletics in an appropriate way in mid-December.”
Konya said he does not expect the cancellations to affect the hockey team’s NCAA tournament hopes. Northeastern was ranked No. 19 in the USCHO preseason poll. “It should not impact us because our pathway to those postseason tournaments is going to be dependent on how we do in conference play,” Konya said.
Although the full details for the NCAA tournament have yet to be released, all men’s team must play at least 13 conference games to be eligible, Hockey East commissioner Steve Metcalf said during his preseason press briefing last week.
The only games scheduled for this weekend come in the form of a national top-10 matchup between No. 2 Boston College and No. 7 UMass on Friday and Saturday.
After that, based off how the first two weeks have played out, everything is TBD.
Liam Flaherty can be reached at liam.flaherty@hockeyjournal.com and on Twitter @_LiamFlaherty.
