Coronavirus: 1919 Stanley Cup Final was canceled due to flu pandemic

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The coronavirus outbreak has altered life for a large swath of the population, and the sports world still is coming to grips with its new reality. 

On Wednesday, the NBA suspended the season after Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the virus. The league reportedly is not optimistic the season will be restarted. The NHL joined the NBA and paused its season indefinitely on Thursday.

Thee are unprecedented times. Would an entire season be called off due to the outbreak? There is only one time in history where a season has been called off by pandemic, according to the Seattle Times. It happened in 1919 when the Stanley Cup Final had to be called off due to the Spanish flu pandemic. 

With the Seattle Metropolitans and Montreal Canadiens battling for hockey supremacy, public health officials called off a decisive Game 6 just 5.5 hours before puck drop after a number of Canadiens had to be hospitalized with fevers ranging from 100 to 105 degrees. 

The Spanish flu plagued the world from January 1918 through December 1920, claiming the lives of between 5 and 10 million people, which was 3 to 5 percent of the world's population. 

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The entire world has ground to a halt due to the coronavirus outbreak. San Francisco, Santa Clara County and the state of Washington took extreme measures this week. The first two banned "mass gatherings" of 1,000 people or more while Washington banned gatherings of over 250 people. 

The World Health Organization labeled the coronavirus a pandemic Wednesday. There are more than 1,200 confirmed cases in the United States, according to NBC News, and 37 people in the U.S. had died as of Wednesday. 

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