Dec 16: McLeod has now been joined by Devin Shore, who has also been placed in the protocol. Of note, Shore played on Tuesday against the Maple Leafs, though he logged just over eight minutes.
Dec 14: Over the past two days, the league has seen two dozen players enter the COVID protocol. Ryan McLeod is the latest, as the Edmonton Oilers have announced the young center will not be available for tonight’s game.
Once again, this is a case of a team that played the Carolina Hurricanes over the weekend announcing a protocol addition, just like the Vancouver Canucks and Calgary Flames. The latter of those teams is in a full shutdown after nine players were ruled out, while the Hurricanes won’t play tonight after six members are now in the protocol. All three Western Canadian teams also played the Boston Bruins, who added Craig Smith and Brad Marchand to the protocol today.
For now, it appears as though McLeod is the only Oilers player who will be held out, but with Zach Hyman also out tonight, Edmonton won’t have their best lineup in against the Toronto Maple Leafs. The 22-year-old McLeod has played in 18 games so far this season, scoring three goals and averaging a little less than 11 minutes a night. That ice time has been up recently, but now faces a potential quarantine of at least ten days. The team did not confirm whether or not McLeod has tested positive; reports, including one from Mark Spector of Sportsnet suggest that he has. Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff tweets that he may not be alone, as there is a potential positive case on the coaching staff as well.
If he experiences any symptoms he’ll miss a minimum of ten days, which would mean all six games scheduled before the Christmas break. At this point though, schedules are incredibly uncertain as a new wave of infections sweeps through the league.
“The team did not confirm whether or not McLeod has tested positive, though it looks that way.”
Why does it look that way? If he’s actually positive vs just being precautionary, it’s a pretty big detail to the story.
If McLeod is positive and was in close contact to his teammates, I’m not sure how comfortable I’d feel as a Leafs player tonight being on the same ice.
You’re right, I got a little sloppy writing the 10th COVID article today. The timeline for McLeod looked like this:
Reports emerge suggesting he had an initial positive, testing needed to confirm. –> Oilers place on COVID protocol without clarifying, original reporter tweets “confirmed.” –> Report emerges about a member of coaching staff being an additional positive test.
I’ve included both now as I should have originally, though as I initially wrote, it does look like McLeod has tested positive.
Thanks for the clarification and all your hard work, Gavin.
The league should extend the Xmas break to 10 days and reschedule those games during the Olympic break.
I 100% agree with this. No chance the NHL guys are going to the olympics, so use that time wisely.