A look into the NWHL bubble
It was all the waiting that got to her that Monday night in Lake Placid. All the unknown, all the time spent not getting answers, all the risks and worries imploded into an overwhelming anxiety.
Consumed with the heaviness of her racing mind, she laid restless in bed until 2 a.m.
Briana Mastel, along with her Boston Pride teammates, had waited over 10 months to play a game again after their 2020 Isobel Cup Final against the Minnesota Whitecaps was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic in March.
Almost a year later, she again found herself waiting. But this time with so much more on the line.
Earlier that Monday, the Connecticut Whale had become the second team to drop out of the NWHL bubble season in Lake Placid due to health and safety concerns surrounding the virus. While the Pride’s journey back to the Isobel Cup Final was to start in three days, there was a feeling of fear as the coronavirus had found its way into the bubble and was imploding it one team at a time.
“You’re just kinda at that point like waiting, wondering if you’re going to be one of those people that test positive because you just don’t know,” Mastel said in a phone interview on Feb. 12 from a hotel in Boston. “You’re just waiting, just sitting around and waiting to hear whether or not the virus got to you.”
Mastel, from Wallingford, had quarantined to the best of her ability leading up to the bubble season. She had brought tea, Airborne and other immune booster supplements just in case. She wore her mask every hour of the day except for playing games at the arena.
Whatever was to happen with the league and the remaining week of the season was out of her control. So, she laid in bed that Monday night, emotional and stressed, as her endless cycle of thoughts eventually tired her to sleep.
Three nights later the waiting ended. She tested positive for COVID-19.
“I was mostly just angry,” she said. “Just angry at COVID, angry at the fact that I got it. … It was a mix of anger, frustration and kinda just sadness and like a little bit of fear. We had been so diligent and were doing everything that we could control, wearing masks and washing hands and staying isolated and all that, so yeah, it was definitely pretty devastating and just your mind kinda goes blank because you can’t really believe it.”
While the NWHL has not released how many players tested positive for the virus during the two-week bubble in Lake Placid, Mastel’s story is one of a handful on the Boston team alone. Despite the league’s recent growth in recognition and all its good intentions of holding a 2021 season, its bubble ultimately crumbled in on itself, forcing the suspension of the season due to health and safety concerns the night before the Isobel Cup semifinals.
“It came together, really quite nicely, but then obviously things out of our control came into play which was really just kinda sad,” the Pride’s Mallory Souliotis said. “COVID won the 2020 Isobel Cup and then, guess what, COVID won the 2021 Isobel Cup for now.”
In November, when the NWHL announced its plans for the two-week bubble season in early 2021, Souliotis was not only excited to get to play hockey again but to be able to do it at one of, if
not the, most historic hockey sites in the country: Herb Brooks Arena.
“I got goosebumps when I found out,” the Pride defender said. “There’s so much hockey history there and to be able to, as a team, hopefully make our own history there was something to get really excited about and really motivated us to hopefully lift the Isobel Cup on the Herb Brooks Arena. Like come on, that’s pretty much a storybook ending, like 40 years later to have a women’s hockey league bubble take place at that same rink. It’s what dreams were made of.”
Players were tested before entering the bubble and upon arrival. To adhere to social distancing protocols, players were to stay in their hotel rooms except for practices and games. Once in the arena, teams would split up into two groups and use two different locker rooms to provide additional space in the indoor facilities. Masks were always on except when on the ice or alone in hotel rooms.
Mastel, a defender for the Pride, couldn’t remember for certain, but says she remembers having a total of two or three PCR tests done and about the same number of rapid tests done inside the bubble. She said players were tested about every two to three days.
The season started on Jan. 23 and jumped into high gear with 10 games in five days.
The league saw an increased number of viewers on its live streams through Twitch, even reaching a record 1.3 million views on Jan. 31. And there were plans to bring the first-ever professional women’s hockey game to national TV with NBC Sports broadcasting both the Isobel Cup semifinals and finals.
But it was on that fifth day of the season that things took a turn for the worse. The Minnesota Riveters announced the team would depart from the bubble and drop out due to increased positive COVID test results.
With six teams now down to five, the season resumed after three days off with a reshuffle of the concluding schedule for the regular season and the Isobel Cup. When players voiced concern, they were met with reassurance that they were safe. Mastel said they were never told how many players were testing positive.
For a moment, though, it appeared the season would continue as planned.
“When we found out that the Rivs were pulled off the bench one game because they had a couple girls who were tested positive, I think then it was crossing peoples’ minds of, OK, ‘Let’s hope we stop this spread. Let’s hope that this is the worst of it,’ ” said the Connecticut Whale’s Maddie Bishop, a former Sacred Heart and East Catholic standout. “It sucked seeing the Rivs have to go home. I know that all of us were hoping that, ‘Let’s hope that this is where it stops.’ ”
But there is no stopping a virus that is invisible.
On Monday, following a team discussion, the Whale decided it would follow the Riveters in withdrawing from the season due to health and safety concerns in the bubble after some of its own players had tested positive and were showing symptoms.
“Of course, everyone was upset,” said Bishop, the Whale forward from Wethersfield. “We had such great talent on the Connecticut Whale team this year and it really was our year to grow and make a statement.”
With the league planning on continuing the postseason now with just four teams, Mastel had trouble sleeping that night.
As Monday turned into Tuesday, players began to focus their attention on the upcoming Isobel Cup, if not to stay mentally focused, to at least stay distracted.
On Wednesday, they were alerted through team staff that the NWHL would suspend the end of the season. No Isobel Cup. No nationally broadcast finals.
“I can’t say I’m not surprised,” said Souliotis, the former defender for Yale. “You look at other leagues, especially the NHL and what’s happening right now, it’s kinda a nightmare in my opinion seeing how many teams have to pause and quarantine for COVID. We don’t really know some of the long-term effects of COVID so it’s kinda scary in that sense.”
The Pride were tested Thursday morning to determine who could return home from the bubble, and when, depending on their health. Mastel received a phone call from the Pride’s general manager Thursday evening informing her she had tested positive.
Soon after, she and a handful of other Pride players who had tested positive were shuttled out of the bubble and brought to a hotel in Boston to quarantine for the CDC-recommended 10 days.
Mastel said she experienced body aches and a fever and lost her sense of smell and taste. She doesn’t have much energy to do anything besides sleep and watch TV between check-in calls with the health departments of New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts.
Quarantining alone in a hotel room wasn’t the ending she envisioned for her and her Boston teammates this season. While the Pride will have to wait another year for their chance at the Isobel Cup Final, she knows the suspension of the season was the right call.
“COVID doesn’t discriminate, and it’ll come for anybody,” Mastel said. “We know there’s a ton of risks going into it. Eventually, if you’re looking out for the well-being of everybody, you have to take extreme measures. I think it needed to happen and I’m glad that it did. You never want to put yourself at further risk.”