NHL vice president and director of hockey operations Colin Campbell says it wouldn’t have been right to play a hockey game in Ottawa, considering the tragic events that occurred Wednesday morning.
“Sometimes it’s best to just step aside and put sports on the backburner,” Campbell said Wednesday on Sportsnet 590 The Fan.
Appearing on Prime Time Sports with Bob McCown and Stephen Brunt, Campbell, who had an instrumental role in the decision to postpone Wednesday night’s game between the Ottawa Senators and Toronto Maple Leafs, explained that he had extensive discussions with general manager Dave Nonis and president Brendan Shanahan of the Toronto Maple Leafs along with owner Eugene Melnyk, general manager Bryan Murray, and president Cyril Leeder of the Ottawa Senators before determining a course of action.
“The important thing was to take a pulse of the situation and figure out what’s right for the people of Ottawa,” he said. “We felt we should take some sort of stand. It’s a political situation and we have to recognize that. They felt we got to get a handle on this thing and felt playing a game wasn’t the right thing to do.
“Cyril [Leeder] had talked to the authorities. He looked into getting additional security. They weren’t going to. They were losing security. That was the concern right away.”
Campbell said he had to ensure that he didn’t make a rash decision and his prior experience proved to a be a big help.
“It’s not the first rodeo for us unfortunately. We dealt with medical situations in games, “ he said. “We dealt with weather and we dealt with political situations — the Boston Marathon bombings for days.
“ Whether it’s 9/11 or the Boston Marathon bombing, you don’t understand the depths of these things until they move along during the day. In Boston, everyone thought it was over after that day. And then the two individuals were in the altercation with the MIT security office and the city was locked down.”
