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Covid won't make it easy to play 56-game NHL schedule |
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Carolina Hurricanes general manager Don Waddell, still consulting with NHL officials and medical experts about his team's Covid situation, said Wednesday morning that he is hoping "that it will not be a long break."
Waddell said he received cell phone alerts at 1:30 a.m. Tuesday that five Carolina players had tested positive. Carolina's second game with Nashville, scheduled for Tuesday, was canceled.
"We will be minus some players," Waddell said. "But we know this: the schedule is already compressed. We aren't going to fit all of these games in. We don't want to play four games in five nights. We want to get back playing as soon as health officials and medical professionals decide when that can be."
Based on what occurred in Major League Baseball and NFL, the NHL anticipated situations like this would occur.
The start of the Dallas Stars season was delayed by 17 positive tests. They will finally launch their schedule this Friday.
Waddell said he had meetings scheduled with the NHL later Wednesday. "We will know in the next 24 hours where to take this thing," Waddell said.
Under the NHL's Covid protocol, players and staff members are tested every morning. Jordan Staal was the team's first case. He played one game against the Detroit Red Wings before he tested positive. Forwards Jordan Martinook, Warren Foegele and Teuvo Teravainen, plus defenseman Jaccob Slavin, were added to the NHL’s list of players in the COVID protocol on Tuesday afternoon.
"We went two weeks before the bubble, then in the bubble, nine days of training camp leading up to the season with never having a case," Waddell said. "Unfortunately, it hit us at the wrong time."
The frustrating element of the Stars' and Hurricanes' Covid outbreaks is that team personnel believed they were doing it right. But teams are not in a bubble. Team personnel are vulnerable, just like we all are. During the latest Covid surge, the news has been that a variant strain of Covid is more transmissible.
"We follow what is happening in other sports and you are hoping you can minimize it by following the right protocols, which we feel we did," Waddell said.
As you enjoy watching the NHL, remember that this isn't going to go smoothly. It won't be easy. It is going to take a while to vaccinate enough people to thwart the spread.
The Hurricanes won't be the last NHL team to be hit by Covid spread. The NHL and NHL Players Associated weighed this reality before deciding to play this season. The schedule has make-up time built in, although it may not be enough, depending upon how many teams are hit by Covid.
The NHL has done what it can by mandating daily testing. But it will need some luck to have every team playing 56 games.
Blogger •HHOF Writer's column on the NHL • 
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