NHL, CBJ face unique COVID-19 challenges
Call it a mini-pause.
After announcing that its regular season wouldn’t pause amid a sweeping COVID-19 outbreak, the NHL adopted a new approach prior to a scheduled holiday break later this week. The league announced Monday that five games slated for Thursday were postponed in order to begin the break two days earlier than planned, carving out a five-day pause for all but the Lightning and Golden Knights, slated to play each other Tuesday.
Four games Wednesday had already been postponed by the outbreak, which has landed more than 17% of the NHL’S 700-plus players on its COVID protocols list in the past week.
Practices will resume Sunday and games will be played Monday, allowing the league to take a brief pause amid a dizzying COVID spread attributed to the recent rise of the Omicron variant.
The NHL is the first professional league in North America to pause its season for any length of time. As of Tuesday, 24 of the league's 32 teams had placed at least one person on the NHL'S COVID protocols list — including 121 players.
Coaches and staffers also populate the list, which has grown at a rapid pace since the Calgary Flames, Nashville Predators, Vancouver Canucks and Boston Bruins were inundated with positive tests between Dec. 13-16.
Eleven teams suspended operations prior to the league's early shutdown, including the Blue Jackets on Monday after six players tested positive in a two-day span. The Jackets' next scheduled game is Tuesday against the Toronto Maple Leafs at Nationwide Arena, but that's assuming the league lifts a ban on games that require travel between the U.S. and Canada.
Experts say hockey is a Covid-breeding ground
Prior to its decision to start the holiday break early, the NHL adopted enhanced COVID protocols similar to those that regulated play last season.
They went into effect this past weekend and will last through at least Jan. 7, when medical experts from the NHL and NHL Players' Association will assess how much impact the measures have on reducing spread. Players are now tested daily while the season is in progress, regardless of vaccination status, and they're now barred from eating indoors in restaurants and bars during road trips.
The league only has one unvaccinated player, Detroit Red Wings forward Tyler Bertuzzi, which shows how easily the virus causing the recent outbreak can still spread among a heavily vaccinated population. A recent report in the Seattle Times also cast a spotlight on how easily it can spread during hockey games, even those played in large NHL arenas with high-tech HVAC air-filtration systems.
The report cited a pair of studies on the effects ice rinks have on the spread of COVID-19, including a paper authored by Krystal Pollitt, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Yale University. Pollitt said the design of ice rinks, with boards and Plexiglas windows surrounding a cold surface, creates a stagnant “box” of air that hovers over the ice.
Infected players can inject high viral loads into that air that is breathed by all at ice level.
“Micro-dynamics of the airflow within ice rinks just really doesn't make it well ventilated at all,” Pollitt told the Seattle Times. “You have this box effectively that traps all of the air within the ice rink. So everyone that's on the ice, they're just breathing that same amount of air when you have a lot of players on the rink like you would in a hockey game. And also just the rate at which they're breathing very heavily. That's just going to release a lot more droplets that could spread transmission to other teammates.”
Anecdotal evidence appears to support that.
All three teams the Blue Jackets played during a road trip that began Dec. 11 in Seattle had outbreaks prior to facing Columbus.
The Vancouver Canucks and Edmonton Oilers actually played against the Jackets, including Canucks defenseman Tucker Poolman who was removed from the game late in the first period after his lab-based test results were received.
It's unknown if reduced access to “point of care” RT-PCR molecular tests in Canada, which return results faster than lab-based PCR tests, led to the situation in Vancouver with Poolman, who was allowed to start that game without his results known.
An NHL spokesman did not reply to an inquiry Tuesday about that situation.
The Oilers had three players placed on the NHL'S protocols list Friday, a day after all three played in Edmonton's 5-2 victory over Columbus.
The good news is the vast majority of NHL COVID-19 cases are not serious, which is a likely result of the league's near-perfect vaccination rate. bhedger@dispatch.com @Brianhedger