Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

NHL: Las Vegas lost out on NHL reboot because of coronavirus cases

Wayne Newton and Shamir

Steve Marcus

An exterior view of the T-Mobile Arena on Wednesday, April 6, 2016.

NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly said Las Vegas was excluded from contention to be an NHL hub city because of the recent surge of COVID-19 cases across Nevada. Instead, the season will resume next month in Edmonton and Toronto.

Las Vegas was one of the four finalists. Multiple reports suggested the league was looking at Las Vegas, but in the end, it was scared away by the virus.

“The fact that the COVID rate was spiking outside of what would be the bubble was certainly a concern for us," Daly said. “We certainly had that conversation with the Vegas people.”

The league will enter its next phase of return-to-play on Monday with training camps. Games are scheduled to resume Aug. 1, and the Golden Knights will play their first game on Aug. 3 against the Dallas Stars.

Nevada, like many states, had an exponential growth of cases at the beginning of the pandemic as healthcare professionals struggled through lacks of tests and equipment. A partial shutdown of the state helped flatten the curve, but once the middle of June came and the league needed to make its choice of cities, the curve went the wrong way.

On June 15, the cumulative test-positivity rate in the state was 5.2%. Since then it has risen to 7.9%, even as the number of cases administered has skyrocketed. There were 106 reported new cases on June 14, the lowest number since then. In that time, numbers have ballooned, including surpassing 1,000 cases on Thursday with 1,004 reported new cases.

It caused Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak to pause Nevada’s reopening procedures, and keep the state in its current phase through the end of August. And on Thursday, he ordered that bars once again close.

“From the start we wanted to pick two hub cities that were the best form a health and safety standpoint, and we were concerned, giving what was happening in Vegas, that that was not the case there,” Daly said. “That certainly led into the decision we made.”

Canada has far fewer cases as a whole. Ontario, the province that will house the Eastern Conference hub in Toronto, reported just 130 new cases Saturday, bringing their total to 251 total cases per 100,000 people. Alberta, hosting the Western Conference hub in Edmonton, has had 197 total cases per 100,000 people.

Nevada has had 871 total cases per 100,000 people.

“Making sure we were in as free-COVID-19 environment as possible came paramount,” commissioner Gary Bettman said.

Justin Emerson can be reached at 702-259-8814 or [email protected]. Follow Justin on Twitter at twitter.com/@j15emerson.