In a perfect world, the Stanley Cup playoffs would have begun today

It’s the second Wednesday in April, and had things gone a bit differently, the Stanley Cup playoffs would have kicked off this evening in the NHL.

It’s hard not to think of a world in which the coronavirus pandemic does not burn like a wildfire across this planet. Even outside of the context of sports, this time has been taxing on us all for a variety of reasons and it’s only fair to want to return to how things were before this all started.

A month ago, the 2019-20 hockey season was chugging along into its last few weeks of play. We had finally reached the most exciting part of the season, where playoff races make at least one or two games a night a must-see event with the potential standings change fallout.

Instead, hockey — and sports as a whole — has come to a grinding halt for the foreseeable future, and the Stanley Cup playoffs that would have begun on April 8 have been delayed indefinitely for the time being.

A hole the size of the Stanley Cup playoffs

To put it bluntly, this sucks. While we’ve had time to come to grips with the lack of sports over the last few weeks, it hits hard today on what would have been the start of a two-month sprint to the finish line and the Stanley Cup. Playoff hockey is the best form of hockey, a wildly chaotic yet incredibly beautiful version of the sport we all love.

Though brackets are made and power rankings are published, no one really knows what’s going to happen in the Stanley Cup playoffs. Sure, we make guesses — some better than others — but no one could have predicted the Columbus Blue Jackets sweeping the historic Tampa Bay Lightning last season in the first round.

That’s the magic of the Stanley Cup playoffs at work. Anything can happen. It’s why the Vegas Golden Knights reaching the Stanley Cup Final in their first season as a franchise was so remarkable, or why the St. Louis Blues winning it all a half a year after being the NHL’s worst team in the league was such a fantastic story.

And it’s a shame we’re not seeing what madness this year’s Stanley Cup playoffs would have brought us. Had the standings stayed as they were before the league went on pause, in the first round alone we would have gotten a Battle of Alberta matchup between the Edmonton Oilers and Calgary Flames, along with a Battle of Pennsylvania between the Pittsburgh Penguins and Philadelphia Flyers.

The defending Stanley Cup champions in the Blues would have had to go up against the Nashville Predators in the first round in their quest to go back-to-back. The Tampa Bay Lightning would have to play the Toronto Maple Leafs, as both team’s previous playoff struggles from past years would have come to a head in this matchup.

The list, unfortunately, goes on.

Mourning the Stanley Cup playoffs that we could have had

Sure, there’s a possibility we’ll see Connor McDavid light up an opponent for his first playoff hat trick later this summer if the NHL can resume play like they hope they can. But, it’s also possible that the league won’t be able to return at all to finish the 2019-20 season, and the storylines we saw play out this year will not come to fruition with the awarding of the Stanley Cup.

Reckoning with that idea has been a hard one over the last month as things have quickly become more real by the day. The days without sports are going to stretch on for an indefinite period of time, and while the loss of the Stanley Cup playoffs this spring hits hard today, it’ll no doubt linger as the weeks go on.

So here’s to you, 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs. We might not see you at all this year — or we could see you in the late summer, who knows — but thanks for the memories that could have been.

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