Montreal Canadiens: The KHL announces a week-long stoppage
The KHL has announced a work stoppage ahead of the second round of the playoffs meaning Montreal Canadiens prospect Alexander Romanov will be on break.
For the longest time, the KHL was the only professional hockey league still playing sports despite closures to the NHL and several leagues in Europe. The regular season is over, and the first round of the playoffs has been underway, with the first round just wrapping up. However, with concerns on a spread increasing, the league has finally decided on some sort of stoppage, which will put Montreal Canadiens prospect Alexander Romanov on reserve.
CSKA Moscow is off to a hot start following up on their league-leading regular season of 94 points. They started the playoffs with the same level of domination sweeping the Torpedo.
The games weren’t all easy. CSKA won the first two by a score of 3-0 while the remaining two were overtime victories. Romanov has seen time in all four games, but his ice time has diminished after Game One falling from nine minutes to three minutes.
They were set to start the second round on Wednesday, but now, the KHL has decided to shut down for the week and work on a new schedule. Unfortunately, the release didn’t mention the elephant in the room, but at least there’s going to be some sort of closure in that area of the hockey world.
The release contains absolutely NOTHING about Covid-19. NOTHING. https://t.co/LBRLjTd3LF
— Aivis Kalniņš (@aiviskalnins) March 16, 2020
As Aivis’ tweet states, the schedule change will involve the six remaining Russian teams in the playoffs: CSKA Moscow, SKA Saint Petersburg, Dynamo Moscow, Ak Bars Kazan, Sibir Novosibirsk and Salavat Yulaev Ufa. Who knows what this means for Finnish team Jokerit Helsinki and Kazakhstan team Barys Nur-Sultan.
It’ll be interesting to see what these changes are and how they will affect the remainder of the season. The KHL hasn’t been allowing fans in the arena for these games, but it is still surprising to see the league continue. Perhaps that’s part of the reason as to why the NHL feels it can finish the season at some point.
Next. A 24-seeded playoff could benefit the Habs. dark
Either way, it’ll be more rest for Alexander Romanov and the rest of CSKA Moscow.