Rapid COVID-19 testing at airports may be game changer for pro teams
About that all-canadian division in the National Hockey League? Maybe, maybe not.
And about the Raptors playing home games this upcoming National Basketball Association season in Louisville? Maybe, maybe not.
And about the Blue Jays returning to Buffalo for home games next Major League Baseball season? You can all but forget about it.
The news broke early in the day on Thursday in a story written by Bryan Passifiume of the Toronto Sun. The Government of Canada is looking at replacing the 14-day quarantine when entering the country with rapid COVID-19 tests at airports and selected border crossings.
Not long after that, the Alberta government announced it was beginning a pilot project on Nov. 2 in Calgary with rapid COVID-19 tests, with Ontario watching closely.
And the sporting world wonders: What does it all mean?
If the project does work and it's implemented in time for the coming NHL, NBA and next year's MLB season, then it should be something of a game changer at least for two Toronto franchises that have been essentially held hostage in this global pandemic by border regulations that have prevented American teams from entering Canada.
Here's the challenge, though, and the difficulty with timing: The NHL and NBA seasons are expected to begin sometime in January. Even a tentative schedule of some kind, an NHL source indicated, would have to be completed by mid-november. Unless the pilot project moves along very quickly and finds its way to Ontario, expect the all-canadian division in the NHL to be in play for the very first time, but expect the Raptors to eventually be playing home games primarily at Scotiabank Arena.
Stories earlier in the week pegged the Raptors' home games heading to Kentucky for the upcoming season.
“I don't know what to say,” said Raptors' president Masai Ujiri. “I saw (the story on the border testing). I haven't got any confirmation on it.”
Ujiri said that, until he knows the timing of the altered testing, he wouldn't know how this would affect the Raptors' upcoming schedule.
This wouldn't just affect professional team sports. This would likely impact the tennis and golf tours, both men's and women's, which cancelled basically everything scheduled for Canada last summer. Should the quarantines be eventually removed, it will open up the possibility of regularly scheduled events returning to this country.
Right now, there is both optimism and skepticism about what this pilot project will mean.
“This seems like a very interesting and positive development,” Bill Daly, deputy commissioner of the NHL, told the Toronto Sun. “We'll see how it progresses.”
One benefit the Blue Jays have on their side is time. They're not first in line to make a decision, the way they were last summer. Then, they had to make a last-minute determination to play home games in Buffalo. Now they get to watch the Raptors — like them, the only Canadian team in an otherwise American league — to see how things work out first.
“Every change on a daily basis gives us more information and the default position of optimism,” said Jays president Mark Shapiro. “It's encouraging to hear (progress).
“Rapid testing could be one way to deal with this ( border difficulty).”
Leafs president Brendan Shanahan is excited and hopeful about the possibility of the borders opening under different circumstances, but he's not certain
it will affect the coming season.
“This does show some optimism and some progress,” said Shanahan. “It's a very narrow corridor with which we're doing this. I don't know a lot about this. But I do know that everyone is hopeful for rapid testing and for potential vaccines. In this case, everyone is rooting for Calgary and Alberta.”
It isn't known exactly when the NHL and NBA seasons will begin, but the expectation right now is sometime in January, about three months later than usual. It isn't known how long the seasons
will be in terms of games played. It isn't known if the MLB season will begin at its normally scheduled time at the beginning of April or end of March. So much of all this is unknown.
But should the pilot project work and be implemented elsewhere in Canada, the four Toronto big-league teams, including soccer giant Toronto FC, will be coming home soon. And with or without fans in these crazy times, that somehow seems just a little bit comforting.