GARRIOCH: The Ottawa Senators will have to do it until Boxing Day to see when they will dress.

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The Ottawa Senators have gone their separate ways for the extended Christmas break.

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The daily COVID-19 tests that senators have been running at the Canadian Tire Center have been suspended until Boxing Day and, as it stands now, are scheduled to skate Sunday afternoon before heading to Washington to face the Capitals. Monday night

It is anyone’s guess if that will actually happen and the best advice anyone can give you is to be vigilant because there are more questions than answers.

A league executive told this newspaper on Thursday that he would be surprised if the NHL actually resumed as scheduled on December 27. After agreeing to a Christmas break earlier Tuesday, the NHL postponed more than 50 games this season, officially withdrew from the Winter Olympics and is trying to determine how to proceed.

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If the senators take on the capitals, they likely won’t have coach DJ Smith behind the bench after he was added to the league’s protocol list earlier this week. A father of three, he has stayed in an Ottawa hotel since the club came home from Philadelphia last Saturday night and is awaiting word from medical staff about his clearance to exit quarantine.

Naturally, he is not the only one in the senators’ field who is isolated.

Goalkeeper Filip Gustavsson, who had COVID-19 last year while playing in Sweden, is among those on protocol alongside assistant coach Davis Payne and video coach Mike King. There were also three other staff members who tested positive when the club returned from a seven-day road trip that began in Fort Lauderdale and ended in Philadelphia.

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With Gustavsson in protocol, if the Senators do resume, it would make sense for the club to bring back veteran goalkeeper Matt Murray from its AHL affiliate in Belleville. He has only had a chance to play twice since he arrived there three weeks ago because the club was closed last week due to a COVID-19 outbreak that affected 18 players and staff.

The senators had all three of their home games this week: Sunday against the Boston Bruins, Tuesday’s visit by the St. Louis Blues and Thursday’s game against the Carolina Hurricanes, all postponed. Washington’s game at Capital One Arena is still scheduled for Monday, but the Caps had their last game before the postponed break due to COVID-19 issues.

Whether the home games against the Bruins on Thursday and the Pittsburgh Penguins on New Years Eve at 1 p.m. go ahead, it’s anyone’s guess. Boston was closed due to a COVID-19 outbreak just before the rest of the league was halted and there is a belief that the NHL could extend its cross-border game ban during the holiday season as well.

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Senators are awaiting guidance from the NHL on which path the club should take with those two home games. Given the fact, nothing has been officially postponed, which means there is still a chance that it will continue as usual, but no one really knows.

Even if it is played, it will hardly be under normal circumstances.

Senators have sold more than 16,000 seats for next week’s games against the Bruins and Penguins, but the province of Ontario has told teams they can only proceed at 50% capacity and there are no food and beverage sales either. . That means fans can’t even get a bottle of water in one game, so you wonder how many are they going to show.

There have been talks among NHL executives about the possibility of the schedule shifting to a fully Canadian division until the fifth wave of the virus passes. The senators will face the Toronto Maple Leafs at Scotiabank Arena on New Years Day.

The club has a four-game tour of western Canada that begins in Vancouver on January 8 and ends on January 15 in Winnipeg.

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Twitter: @sungarrioch

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Reference-ottawasun.com

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