sports
19 February 2021
Red & Black
17 Sports
NHL Creates New COVID-19 Protocols Sofia Jenkins Red & Black Staff
During the last few weeks of the National Hockey League (NHL) season, there have been some major changes to all of the teams’ schedules. On Feb. 8, the Philadelphia Flyers became the fifth team in the past two weeks to have their games put on pause due to COVID-19 outbreaks on their team and/or staff. The other four teams on pause are the Buffalo Sabres, Colorado Avalanche, Minnesota Wild and the New Jersey Devils. Now, what does this mean for the teams who were supposed to play these five teams? Well, the NHL is working overtime to try and fit games into the schedule later to make up for the games that these teams are missing. Also, since these outbreaks have caused a dozen different games to be postponed this week, the NHLPA has established more safety protocols to decrease this spreading of the virus. Some of these new protocols include point of care (POC) rapid testing that
will be performed on game days in effort to prevent on-ice transmission of the Coronavirus. They included this new protocol because in the cases of the Devils and the Sabres, the virus may have been transmitted during the game. On-ice officials who officiated the games tested positive as well as multiple players from each of the teams. Another new protocol is that the NHL is reconfiguring seating for previously infected players on each of the teams. The NHL thinks that seating previously infected players with never-before infected players will reduce the outbreak because of the information that a person cannot contract the virus again before 90-days after testing positive for the virus. These rules as of now are in effect until Feb. 28 and are only being enforced in the United States. This means that the teams who are playing in Canada will not have to adhere to these rules because they have not had any COVID-19 outbreaks in any of their teams. The NHL realigned its divisions, just for the 2021 season, with the divisions for teams based in the United States being geographically determined and the Canadian teams comprising one division. The teams play only their divisional opponents which is meant to limit travel and in the case
of Canadian teams, avoid traveling between Canada and the United States and allows those teams to comply with Canadian rules and regulations with respect to Coronavirus social distancing. This concept has worked very well for Canadian teams as those teams have done a more effective job at elim-
inating outbreaks in their organizations. One will have to see how many more games get postponed and how many more teams suffer outbreaks in the upcoming weeks to see if the NHL will have to make impactful and season-shortening changes to the balance of the 2021 season.
Courtesy NHL.com
The Philadelphia Flyers are the latest NHL team to have games postponed due to a COVID-19 outbreak.
