T-Mobile Arena is going to be a lot quieter now that the National Hockey League has suspended its season indefinitely. It is leaving the door open to eventual resumption of play, asking constituent arenas to keep ice time 
available through July. The league stated, “following last night’s news that an NBA player has tested positive for coronavirus–and given that our leagues share so many facilities and locker rooms and it now seems likely that some member of the NHL community would test positive at some point–it is no longer appropriate to try to continue to play games at this time.” Although the Las Vegas Golden Knights do not share space with any other team, there’s no escaping the blow that will fall heavily both on the franchise and on landlord MGM Resorts International. The next question is whether and when play by MGM’s own Las Vegas Aces of the WNBA will be affected.
Meanwhile, collegiate cancellations continue to spiral (with one of the first cancellations falling upon Las Vegas), throwing many people’s travel plans and—dare we mention it?—the sports-betting market completely out of whack. Pity the poor Nebraska Husker basketball team, quarantined in Bankers Life Fieldhouse for the next couple of weeks. They’re gonna get mighty bored.
On a much-needed lighter note, a newly discovered species of treehopper bug has been named after Park MGM headliner Lady Gaga. Why? Because Kaikaia gaga has “a wacky fashion sense.” “They are morphological wonders, sporting bizarre protuberances that look like horns, gnarled branches, antlers, fruiting fungi, brightly colored flags or dead plant leaves,” says a University of Illinois press release. And they sing, too, courtesy of vibrating plant stems. Maybe Jim Murren can cultivate giant offshoots to serve as backup vocalists.
* Murren should also like this: Shares of his main man Joe Biden to win the presidency are up to 48 cents on PredictIt (way up from an erstwhile four cents) and Donald Trump‘s have slipped to 44 cents. Blame it on coronavirus.
