MATTHEWS’ CASE WAKE-UP CALL GOING FORWARD FOR NHL
This is what could prevent the season from concluding — never mind reopening
It’s all fun and games until a Rocket Richard Trophy finalist contracts COVID-19.
As first reported by Steve Simmons of Postmedia on Friday, Auston Matthews has tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Not Austin Watson. Not Zachary Aston-reese. Not some nobody. A superstar who flirted with 50 goals this season.
This is the NHL’S worst fear. This is what could prevent the season from concluding — never mind reopening in a few weeks.
Matthews, whose mustachioed face is on the cover of NHL20, is the best player in the biggest market in the NHL. And right now, he’s also the poster boy for what can go wrong if the NHL comes back before it’s safe to do so.
One by one, the dominoes are starting fall. It’s not just Matthews. The Tampa Bay Lightning, who might be the top contenders to win the Stanley Cup, were forced to temporarily shut down their practice facility on Friday after at least three team members and additional staff members tested positive for COVID-19. Coupled with Matthews’ positive test, it was easily the worst day since the league was forced to shut its doors on March 12.
According to the NHL, more than 200 players have been tested since Phase 2 opened June 8, with 11 having tested positive.
Even if most — if not all — of those cases occurred south of the border, it’s still an alarming number. More and more, it’s starting to feel as though any progress that was made during the past three months was ruined by the equivalent of a trip to the hair salon.
The league, which has been so intent on finishing the season, has to look at what has transpired in the past couple of weeks and wonder if they didn’t maybe jump the gun. It’s definitely starting to look that way.
The cases are not going down as fast as anyone wanted.
If anything, with each step forward the NHL has taken, the coronavirus is pushing things two, three steps back.
And yet, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told Postmedia News on Friday that “there is no new or different direction at this point. We are still hoping to be in a position to open (training) camps on July 10.”
But there’s no question that these positive tests have served as a wake-up call for the NHL. As it stands, both the league and the National Hockey League Players’ Association are waiting to see what the next few days will bring. Arizona, where Matthews had been training, and Florida have become hot spots for the virus, so the hope is that these were isolated incidents where positive cases have recently spiked.
Maybe things will be safer a few weeks from now, when everything is centralized in two hub cities and the league can better control where players eat, sleep and interact.
Maybe.
Or maybe all of this is inevitable. As much as it tries to put safeguards in place — the
NHL issued a detailed 22-page memorandum on the strict, stepby-step procedures of Phase 2, including how many players were allowed in the practice facility at a time, for how long they were allowed to be there, the testing and cleaning requirements, and much more — there’s only so much they can control.
There are going to be positive cases. And if they get out of hand, there’s no way the NHL can continue with its plans on Phase 3. If anything, the league should think of reversing course and going back to Phase 1 until it can get better control curtailing the virus.
It probably won’t, of course. As Daly and commissioner
Gary Bettman have repeatedly said, one or two positive cases won’t be enough to stand in the way of awarding the Stanley Cup this season. There’s too much money tied up in having the playoffs.
But what kind of playoffs will the NHL have if it doesn’t have its stars?
In a couple of weeks, Matthews should be virus-free just in time for the start of training camp.
The same goes for the rest of the Lightning players. They probably won’t miss any time. But can you imagine what the reaction would be if this occurred a month from now?
What happens if Sidney Crosby also gets COVID-19? How about Connor Mcdavid? What if the virus works its way through the dressing room of the Boston Bruins during the actual Stanley Cup final? What then?
This isn’t a pulled groin or a separated shoulder. It’s not even a concussion. This is not some hockey-related injury that comes with the territory.
This is avoidable.
We’re already attaching an asterisk to the Stanley Cup this year, with some jokingly calling it the COVID Cup.
But if a team ends up losing the championship because it lost a player to the coronavirus, then you might as well not even award it.
With each step forward the NHL has taken, the coronavirus is pushing things two, three steps back.