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As the latest crop of NHL draft hopefuls wait inside the Bell Centre in Montreal to hear their name called on Day 2, a massive cell phone outage within the area has unexpectedly thrown a wrench into the proceedings.
Canadian telecom giant Rogers is experiencing a major service disruption that has affected wireless, cable and internet customers throughout the country, per multiple reports. Internet monitoring watchdog group Netblocks.org reported the outage, which began early Friday morning, lowered “national connectivity down to 75% of ordinary levels” as of Friday morning.
The technical issues carried over into the continuation of the 2022 NHL Draft as the event kicked off Day 2 at 11 a.m. local time. NHL insider Chris Johnston later tweeted officials made an announcement about the outage and instructed teams to “use the hard lines at their draft tables” as Rogers continued working on the issue.
Rogers has since issued two responses on Twitter regarding the service disruption. The first came at 8:54 a.m. ET, with the last coming a little under three hours later at 11:26 a.m. ET. The issue has yet to be repaired, as of this publication.
While the technical issues may have put a bit of damper on Friday’s coverage, front offices around the league will surely find a way to keep making moves after an exciting Day 1.
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The hometown Canadiens selected Juraj Slafkovsky first overall, followed by the selection of fellow Slovakian star Simon Nemec at No. 2 by the Devils. The Coyotes chose Logan Cooley with the third selection while Shane Wright ended up going fourth to the Kraken.
