The NHL has officially postponed several games, shutting down the Calgary Flames, Colorado Avalanche, and Florida Panthers through the holiday break. The following games will need to be rescheduled:
- Calgary: Dec 21 vs Anaheim, Dec 23 vs Seattle
- Colorado: Dec 18 vs Tampa Bay, Dec 20 @ Detroit, Dec 22 @ Buffalo, Dec 23 @ Boston
- Florida: Dec 18 @ Minnesota, Dec 21 @ Chicago, Dec 23 vs Nashville
The Panthers have been ravaged by COVID recently, placing eight players in the protocol this week. Aaron Ekblad, Frank Vatrano, Sam Bennett, Radko Gudas, Ryan Lomberg, Brandon Montour, and Carter Verhaeghe are all unavailable for the club, while a postponement could suggest even further poor results in testing today. It would be the second time in just a few days that the Wild have a game postponed due to their opponent’s situation, after missing Tuesday’s match against the Carolina Hurricanes.
For Colorado, this was a predictable outcome after they were stripped of several key players just before game time last night. Darcy Kuemper and Cale Makar were both ruled out despite expecting to play only hours after Andre Burakovsky and J.T. Compher were added to the protocol. That forced the Avalanche to play shorthanded and with an emergency backup goaltender though according to multiple reports including Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet, Colorado was actually given the option to not play the game. The Avalanche ended up losing the game by a 5-2 margin, and it now looks like they’ll be given a few days to get their outbreak under control.
Calgary has basically the entire organization in the protocol, with just four active players outside of it after Mikael Backlund entered this morning. The team had already seen games on Dec 13, 14, 16 and 18 postponed.
Despite these postponements, Greg Wyshynski of ESPN reports that there is still not a strong push to pause the season entirely. The league instituted some protocol changes recently and, according to Wyshynski, wants to give them “some runway.”
A pause for what? They would come back, all get it, none be sick, and be in the same boat as right now. They’re the healthiest people on earth and only ONE player in the whole league is not vaccinated.
Just for clarity’s sake, Marco Rossi, Brandon Sutter, Alex Stalock, and I believe Josh Archibald have all had their careers paused or potentially ended due to the serious effects they received from Covid. Obviously the vast majority will not have any lasting effects at all but it can’t just be brushed off as if everybody is going to be ok.
@jdgoat whats your point? You want people to mourn the loss or what? You want the healthier guys to be sorry for being healthier than these 4? Or you just want stupid measures that make no difference for the sake of saying “oh we tried, we tried for good”. Well gotta tell ya its been 2 years everything’s been tried, noones got cure and this thing is not going away even if you eat your cereal with boosters instead of milk every day for the rest of your life. Still want your life being shut down?
@ Danny – This is all about economic management. The disease is real, on enough of a level that governments are willing to halt economics. “Stupid” measures, they are not so if they mitigate litigation or spread or ultimately economic downturn on a larger scale.
Follow the money… and it is not with big pharma. It is now about Loss Prevention. Us Wage Slaves cannot die, we are important to the rich. They need us healthy and not dying.
This is why vaccines are not BS. We must keep Producing!!!
@KAR 120C – You keep trotting out this “wage slave” nonsense, apparently unaware that those “wage slaves” can be replaced in an instant by immigrant labor. Big Pharma doesn’t care about your health, only that you get hooked on their products.
Just close these comments now as this is gonna become another dang beatdown debate about this virus and how we should or should not live our lives!
No one is forcing you to read them.
LOL. I agree, but I enjoy interjecting non-popular views and see if it stimulates critical thinking… which it does not.
Someone should tell all these people that are catching Covid that there is a vaccine available
Umm, you do realize that all these players testing positive for covid are all double vaccinated, eh? Or maybe you were being sarcastic.
I was. It’s tough with text