Two of Hunter Brzustewicz’s playoff games are being scheduled because of the solar eclipse

Here’s the release from the OHL from Wednesday morning:

The Ontario Hockey League has announced today that the potential games 6 and 7 between the Kitchener Rangers and Erie Otters round one series will move to April 9th and April 10th.

In an effort to avoid logistical challenges affecting travel presented by the upcoming total solar eclipse on Monday, April 8^th and arena availability at the Erie Insurance Arena, the League has announced that potential Games 6 and 7 of the series will be re-assigned from their originally scheduled dates of Monday, April 8th and Tuesday, April 9th to the following dates

Game 6, if necessary, is rescheduled for Tuesday, April 9th at 7:00pm in Erie
 Game 7, if necessary, is rescheduled for Wednesday, April 10th at 8:00pm in Kitchener

Total solar eclipses – which occur when the moon passes directly between the Earth and the sun, completely obscuring the sun – are a big deal. Because of how dang small the moon is and various complexities regarding orbits and whatnot, they’re pretty rare. Rarer still are total solar eclipses across North America: this is the first total eclipse visible in Canada since February 1979 and the last one visible in the contiguous United States (the lower 48) until August 2044. (And even that one will be pretty far north.)

(Over at the CBC, Andrew Chang discussed the uniqueness of this specific eclipse.)

So as you can imagine, given how incredible and rare such an occasion is, it’s become a gigantic deal in areas of North America where the totality of the eclipse is seen – in layman’s terms, the narrow area where the sun will get completely blocked out by the moon during the eclipse rather than mostly obscured.

My old colleague Mark Scheig of The Hockey Writers, who’s based in Erie, provided a bit of context.

Kitchener and Erie have played three games of their series so far, with the Rangers holding a 2-1 series lead after their dramatic 4-3 overtime win on Tuesday night. Games 4 and 5 are scheduled for Thursday and Friday, respectively. If Erie wins one of those two games, Game 6 will be necessary.

But due to the sun and the moon’s cosmic ballet, the conclusion of that series may have to wait a little bit.