In what feels like the dozenth shoe to have dropped in the last 24 hours, Hockey East is expected to announce shortly that the league’s men’s tournament will be cancelled.
Sources have confirmed that @hockey_east will announce the cancelation of their league tournament. That is five of six conferences that will cancel. The Big Ten is the only one that hasn’t canceled yet, but expect that sometime today.
— USCHO.com (@USCHO) March 12, 2020
UPDATE: Officially cancelled per the league:
The Hockey East Association has announced that the 2020 Hockey East Men’s Tournament will not be played due to concerns over the COVID-19 health situation.
— Hockey East (@hockey_east) March 12, 2020
Yesterday, the NCAA finally issued some guidance on how to handle the rapidly evolving Coronavirus situation, finally announcing that NCAA tournament games will be played without spectators. Boston College as an institution followed the NCAA’s lead shortly after in having all on-campus sporting events be played in a similar fashion (in addition to closing dorms and moving to remote learning). Then the ACC announced that the rest of the men’s basketball conference tournament would be played without fans too.
A day later, things are rapidly changing. The ACC then announced that their conference tournament will be cancelled, followed by several hockey and basketball conferences, and now Hockey East is following suit. Expect Boston College, the regular season champion, to be declared league champion and given the league’s NCAA autobid, unless the NCAA cancels the national tournament too (which certainly appears more than possible at this point given the rapidly changing announcements).
With Hockey East’s announcement, that would seem to answer most of the questions that concern Boston College Athletics for now, though with how quickly things are evolving, it’s of course possible that some change in the news could pop up — in particular, cancellations of games that had previously be announced including the national tournaments. We’ll be right here with anything new should that happen.