NHL needs to be more open about COVID-19
With no stigma attached to disease, why hide who has it?
In the 2009 playoffs, Nicklas Lidstrom missed the final two games of the Western Conference final with what was vaguely described as a “lower-body injury.” But everyone who saw the Detroit defenceman doubled over in pain knew what the actual extent of the injury really was.
Lidstrom, who had been speared by Chicago’s Patrick Sharp in Game 3, had a badly bruised testicle. It required surgery. He said it was the most painful injury he’d ever endured.
It was also the most embarrassing.
Going forward, we will no longer be told if a player pulls a muscle or breaks a bone or even ruptures his scrotum in a game. And we certainly won’t know if he develops a respiratory illness that could jeopardize him, his teammates and the entire Stanley Cup playoffs.
According to the NHL, disclosing who has the coronavirus is off limits. And if you can’t disclose who has the coronavirus, by process of elimination, then you can’t really disclose any other injury.
In other words, there is no transparency when it comes to player absences.
If someone misses a game, it could be because he suffered a concussion. Or it could be because he has COVID-19. It’s up to fans — and other players sharing the same hotels and facilities inside one of two bubbles — to guess.
“Medical privacy is important in this process,” deputy commissioner Bill Daly said during a conference call on Saturday, one day after the NHL and NHLPA ratified an agreement to begin the playoffs on Aug. 1. “Having said that, we understand as a league we have an obligation of some transparency with respect to the COVID virus in particular.
“At least for now we’re going to maintain a policy where the league is announcing on league numbers and clubs are prohibited from giving any information with respect to COVID test results and for the purposes of making the system work, any injury information going forward.”
We still don’t know for sure whether Toronto’s Auston Matthews tested positive for COVID-19 last month or whether he still has the coronavirus. And we won’t know if he gets it again — even if it’s prior to Game 7 of the Stanley Cup final — because the NHL doesn’t want us to know.
Why the secrecy? What is the disadvantage of saying that Matthews or another player has tested positive for COVID-19? Well, the league wants you to believe that it’s a privacy issue. But in reality, all they really want is to control the message at a time when the potential negative press from one, two or a handful of tests could end up shutting down the NHL’S dream of awarding the Stanley Cup before a single game is even played.
“The media and public will know what kind of situation we’re in,” Daly said. “But we don’t want to be in a situation where we’re doing it on a club-by-club basis or a player-by-player basis, because I think the interests of medical privacy are important and we’re going to protect them.”
The league said it would give daily or weekly updates during the playoffs as to how many players have tested positive for COVID-19, but it will not identify what players have it or even what team they play for. But the latter two details are just as important as the first. In some ways, with up to 12 teams living inside the same bubble, they are even more essential.
If you were a player, wouldn’t you want to know if the person you’re riding the elevator with or lining up against in the faceoff circle has the coronavirus? Concussions are not contagious, but COVID-19 is.
We’re at the point now in this pandemic where everyone knows at least one person who has contracted the coronavirus. It’s not as if we’re announcing which players have erectile dysfunction or irritable bowel syndrome. There is no stigma around COVID-19. If you get it, it doesn’t mean you did anything wrong. Put enough people in a hotel — with some workers coming and going within the bubble — and chances are that someone is going to get it and spread it.
When asked what it would take for the league to cancel the playoffs, Daly said there is no threshold.
“One positive shouldn’t shut down the tournament,” he said.
Multiple tests might not, even. It’s more of a sense and a feel as to whether the spread of the virus has got out of hand.
In other words, if five players on five different teams get the coronavirus, it’s a different situation than if five players on the same team tested positive. There’s also a difference between Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl testing positive versus a third-pairing defencemen and the backup goalie.
But we’ ll have to trust the league in being able to differentiate between the two. And we’ll also have to trust that teams and players, who have a history of hiding concussions, won’t hide a heightened temperature reading if it means advancing to the conference final.
Maybe that is why Calgary’s Travis Hamonic and Vancouver’s Sven Baertschi, among others, already have opted out of the playoffs. Players have until the start of training camp on Monday to decide whether they will participate.
“The fact is that all of us — everybody who’s served — understands the importance and the seriousness of what we’re dealing with,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said, “and I don’t think anybody is going to want to be playing games with the truth and the reality of what we’re all dealing with.”
The fact is that these are also hockey players. They are young and healthy. They are potentially the least at- risk group for dying from COVID- 19 or even being hospitalized. If Lidstrom, who returned to play in the Stanley Cup final — albeit in considerable pain — was willing to risk his so-called manhood for a chance at the Cup, what are the odds that a player or a team will try to play on?
Either way, the league is making sure we’ll never know about it.
I DON’T THINK ANYBODY IS GOING TO WANT TO BE PLAYING GAMES WITH THE TRUTH.