Possible Travis Hamonic will be absent from the start of Canucks training camp

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The Vancouver Canucks won’t just miss Elias Pettersson and Quinn Hughes when their 2021 training camp begins Thursday in Abbotsford.

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Travis Hamonic may also be absent.

As first reported by Irfaan Gaffar of The Fourth Period and confirmed by Postmedia, although the veteran blueliner, as well as Pettersson and Hughes, is listed for the Canucks’ 54-man training camp, he is not expected to be in. the camp to start.

One source suggested that his absence is related to the NHL’s COVID-19 protocols, which severely restrict the activities of players who are not fully vaccinated.

In the first in-person meeting with the media since March 2020, Canucks general manager Jim Benning said Hamonic would be in Vancouver for training camp.

He said he expected the entire team to be fully vaccinated at the start of the regular season. A week ago, the team did not confirm that their entire team had yet been fully vaccinated, leading one to believe that one or more players have not yet been fully vaccinated.

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“I think they knew the importance of getting vaccinated,” Benning said of whether there was any resistance from players to getting vaccinated this summer, especially since the team experienced a serious outbreak last season, with most of the players and their families getting sick. .

“There weren’t many kids who didn’t want to get vaccinated,” he added.

Kevin Epp, Hamonic’s agent, did not immediately respond to an email inquiry about Hamonic’s possible absence.

Like the vast majority of his 2020-21 Canucks teammates, Hamonic contracted the novel coronavirus that causes COVID-19, but public health authorities as well as the NHL and the NHL Players Association say that Scientific evidence shows that getting vaccinated still boosts your immune system. response beyond that developed after infection.

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The league and the Palestinian Authority agreed that unvaccinated players (the NHL deputy commissioner said last week that he expects only a dozen league players to go unvaccinated) can be suspended without pay for the days they can’t perform. your contracted duties due to COVID. -19 diseases, quarantine or other public health requirements.

Unvaccinated players can apply for an exemption due to sincere medical or religious beliefs, but even then they must undergo regular testing and are extremely limited as to where they can go and behave due to their increased risk of infection.

While still with the Calgary Flames, Hamonic opted out of the 2019-20 summer comeback program due to concerns about his daughter’s health. Now around 3.5, his daughter was hospitalized when she was 8 months old with a serious respiratory illness and at that time he felt that the risk of her contracting COVID-19 was great enough that she would choose not to play, which the NHL and the Palestinian Authority had done. the players agreed what they could do.

More to come …