Earlier this week NBC Sports published a video on its Twitter page featuring Doc Emrick reading an emotional essay about the absence of hockey in American life and what it may look like when the games come back. On Monday, Emrick was a guest on NBCSN’s Lunch Talk Live with Mike Tirico on Monday. Tirico and Emrick discussed what a return to action could look like for the NHL.
Like all sports, hockey does have the potential to come back and play games in front of empty arenas. Emrick says that would ruin the energy viewers have come to expect from the sport though.
“There would be energy from both benches which would be audible, but I think after those first couple of games, we would certainly miss it a lot because so much of what we rely on for the energy of the arena comes from the fanbase,” the voice of the NHL on NBC said.
As for where things stand in the league once play resumes, Emrick doesn’t have a concrete answer. In fact, he told Tirico that the NHL isn’t even sure what that would look like right now.
“All along, the NHL has said what has to happen will be fair,” Emrick says. “The league is being very smart about these things and has a plan B, C, D and E depending on when it’s safe to get back to play.”
One scenario that has been discussed according to Emrick is rolling every team’s record back to where it was after 68 games and going from there. When play was suspended, every NHL team had played at least that many games. Some had played as many as 71 games.
If the league figures out how to stage a Stanley Cup Finals in 2020, the games will be shown on NBC.
