Bruins-Habs Saturday and Bruins-Avs Thursday both postponed

Update (2:39 PM) — The Bruins announced earlier this afternoon that the Bruins vs. Avalanche game scheduled for a week from yesterday has now been postponed as well.

Weirdly, it seems like there still hasn’t been a decision made on Sunday.

Additionally, the Bruins have another game scheduled before that Avs game (against the Hurricanes, who are also dealing with an outbreak, on Tuesday). That game hasn’t been postponed yet.

As funny as it’d be for the league to try to justify postponing Saturday and Thursday but playing Sunday and Tuesday, I think it’s safe to assume at this point that the B’s will be out of action through Christmas.

More to come.

The NHL was suddenly blessed with a good deal of common sense this morning, announcing that the Bruins vs. Canadiens game scheduled for Saturday night in Montreal has been postponed.

Understandably, no make-up date has been set at this time.

As you’re all very well aware, the Bruins are dealing with a rapidly expanding COVID-19 outbreak, and it seems like a new player or staff member is entering protocol every day.

The Canadiens, meanwhile, were asked by the Province of Quebec to play their game against the Flyers last night behind closed doors.

All of that adds up to a pretty obvious “yeah, maybe scrap this game” decision, but given how reluctant the league has been to do that to this point, you could never really be sure.

My guess is that the Bruins had serious reservations about crossing the Canadian border and potentially dealing with different international rules regarding quarantine, isolation, etc. in the event of a positive test.

In that same vein, the league probably had concerns about PR fallout from something like that happening too (“BRUINS TRAPPED IN CANADA” would be quite a headline).

The league didn’t confirm any plans for Sunday’s game in Ottawa against the Senators, but it’s not hard to connect the dots.

However, the NHL canceling Saturday’s game only to have the Bruins go on ahead and play on Sunday would be a very NHL thing to do.

We’ll probably continue to see more one-off postponements trickle out as the outbreak expands across the league.

Hey, at least you have your Saturday night free to watch the Patriots now!