2019-2020 NHL season thread

Very eerie here. The whole Blues bench was scurrying around, mass confusion. TV guys said he is awake and headed to hospital.
Now they are announcing the game is postponed. It was 1-1. Damn sad.

 

Brutal. Right call. Could not imagine being able to play under the circumstances.

 

Blues calling it a "cardiac episode."

 

Really good guy. Wish all the best.

 

All night I kept thinking about Hank Gathers, remembering that night, seeing him fall to the court 20 feet from where I was sitting. Memories I will always have. Biggest story of my career. Best wishes for Jay Bouwmeester.

This stuff is happening a lot and hitting home -- Nick Adenhart, Tyler Skaggs, Kobe Bryant, countless football players. Sports is making news that isn't sports.

Being at the game and seeing the chaos on the Blues bench, I tried to take it all in best I could. First thing I noticed was scurrying around the bench, which is unusual during a TV timeout. I saw Jordan Binnington, who was the backup goalie, getting the hell out of there, heading up the tunnel toward the locker room, so I thought maybe Jake Allen had gotten hurt and Binnington was going to stretch. But then I saw Allen standing on the ice and I knew it had to be some sort of medical situation. I couldn't see the player.
Despite it looking chaotic, it really was the players stepping up and taking appropriate, emergency action. They ripped the bench out of the floor to get it out of the way. Others skated over to the Zamboni door to escort the EMT personnel onto the ice. Then they cleared out to give them room.

It did happen at the beginning of a TV timeout. The ice crew came out to scrape the ice. The arena host held a taco giveaway with the owner of Yahoo Fish Tacos, asking random fans easy questions to win a taco. They couldn't know what was going on and they had a program to stay with. The TV station went to a commercial. When it came back, most of the immediate action was done. It all happened so quickly. One fortunate thing about the coverage was analysts for both teams were in the Pierre Box between the benches -- Brian Hayward and Darren Pang. They gave the TV audience information that those of us in the arena weren't getting. Must have been strange for those ex-jocks to have to get involved with the reporting of breaking news.

Then they announced the game was postponed. We figured that was going to happen. This night just dredged up a lot of memories.

 

Not the first time this has happened. Rich Peverely in 2014. Never played again.

Blue Jackets, Dallas Stars game postponed for Rich Peverley incident rescheduled

 

Yes, his name came up last night. When Gathers died, it was during the West Coast Conference Tournament (we're three weeks from the anniversary of that tragedy) and they canceled the rest of it. The Angels and A's postponed a game after Adenhart died. The Angels and Rangers postponed games after Skaggs died.

 

I was a kid when Gathers died. I'll never forget LMU's tournament run afterward ...

 

Man, I was right in the middle of it. When LMU beat Michigan at the Long Beach Arena, that was the best game I have ever seen at any time in any sport.

I remembered something else about last night and thinking about Gathers. We were at LMU waiting for information. Another guy from our staff came to help out with coverage. We sent him to the hospital, about 10 minutes away. He was the first media there and he caught family reaction, the aunt coming out of a room and pounding the wall. That reporter was Eric Stephens, who now covers the Ducks for The Athletic and was also there last night providing coverage.