On Thursday, the Tampa Bay Lightning announced that they would postpone their home opener against the Carolina Hurricanes, which was set to take place on Saturday, October 12th. At this point, no date has been announced for the make-up.
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The Lightning (and most of their families) have been in North Carolina since Monday as they are set to open the season on Friday against the ‘Canes. According to the Tampa Bay Times Eddie Encina, the Lightning are planning to return to the area Friday night following the game. If nothing else, it will give them some time to get their affairs in order.
At this point, they aren’t sure what they will be returning to, and the extra time off (their next scheduled game is on Tuesday) will give them time to figure out what they need to do if their houses or vehicles suffered damage from the storm. In his post-practice media scrum, Coach Cooper admitted that the players’ thoughts aren’t fully focused on hockey,
“Everybody’s minds aren’t probably where they should be, coming here, relaxing, having fun. There is a lot going on at home, and whether it’s family, friends, houses, cars, what it’s going to look like. Pretty much everybody on our team doesn’t have power yet. So what is it going to look like when we get back in a couple of days. There’s a lot of concern for everyone there. That’s our home, and it’s going to be drastically different than when we left.”
Lightning captain Victor Hedman echoed those thoughts, telling the media, “It’s tough, we’re humans. I’ve been there for fifteen years and it’s been my home. It’s tough to put that aside, but we’ve got to focus on the game tomorrow.”
With two West Coast teams coming in next week, expect the league and the Lightning to announce any further changes to the schedule fairly quickly. The Canucks are scheduled to kick off their first East Coast trip in Tampa on Tuesday, while the Golden Knights are supposed to be in town on Thursday after they play in Washington, DC. The league will want to give them time to adjust their travel schedules if they need to postpone either game.