One Month

It was one month ago that the NHL officially suspended its season as a result of the Coronavirus pandemic, and even though March 12th isn’t that long ago in the overall scheme of things, these past few weeks have felt like an eternity.

It’s hard to believe that it’s only been a month since the sporting world shut down given the rate at which life has changed in the weeks that followed. With each passing day bringing another flavour of bad news, it’s hard to imagine where we’ll be in another month from now or if we’ll be any closer to normal life, making the concept of watching sports again feel about as alien as it does feeling normal. We’re living through one of the most difficult periods in history and the idea of hockey coming back takes a backseat to the struggles that so many of us are battling through on a daily basis.

So when we talk about scenarios for the NHL coming back to finish up its season in July or August, I’m having a hard time figuring out what that would even look like or where we’ll be when that time comes. This past month has felt like a decade and I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like over the next 60 or 90 days as we wait for the world to get a handle on COVID-19 or if we’ll even be close by then. Will we be any closer to normalcy than we are today? How much are we even going to care about whether or not we’re able to watch hockey? For everybody, taking care of ourselves and our families is what matters most right now and that’s the way it should be.

Yesterday, we were hit with the horrible news of Colby Caves’ passing, a tragedy that’s hard to understand in the first place, and all I could think about was his wife’s note on Instagram where she said that they weren’t able to be by his side in the end. That’s heartbreaking on every level, and I can’t even begin to understand what his family, friends, and wife must be going through right now as they try to make sense of their loss. Colby Cave was entering the prime of his life with so much to look forward to and those moments were robbed from him and his family. They deserved so much better than this. They deserve peace, and I hope and pray that they’re able to find it. I hope they can find strength in each other.

We’re only a month into this thing and I have no idea when we’ll be able to watch sports again, when life will even begin to look anywhere close to normal again, or where we’ll be by the time things turn around, but I hope that everyone reading this now takes time to appreciate the friends and family around you, which is what matters right now. As we’ve seen countless times already in all different areas of our lives, there is no telling what the day ahead will bring or how life will be impacted, and that unknown makes living in the present even that much more important. Sports will come back eventually, but the opportunities to express ourselves to those that matter most may not, so I urge everyone to take advantage of the time we have.