Stu Cowan: Nine Men Like Canadiens Prepare for NHL Reboot in Tampa

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Ready to play NHL Survivor?

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Here’s what the rest of this season could look like as the NHL tries to keep playing despite the high number of COVID-19 cases as a result of the Omicron variant.

On Monday afternoon, the Canadiens flew to Tampa, where they are scheduled to play the Lightning on Tuesday. (7 pm, TSN2, RDS, TSN 690 Radio, 98.5 FM). The Canadiens made the trip without nine players who are on the NHL’s COVID-19 protocol list. Goalkeeper Jake Allen, Ben Chiarot, Joel Edmundson, Jeff Petry and Chris Wideman were added to the roster ahead of Monday morning’s practice in Brossard, joining Laurent Dauphin, Mike Hoffman, Artturi Lehkonen and Tyler Toffoli. Goalkeeping coach Eric Raymond is also on the list.

The Lightning have six players on the protocol roster: goalkeepers Andrei Vasilevskiy and Brian Elliott, along with Anthony Cirelli, Pierre-Edouard Bellemare, Mikhail Sergachev and Andrej Sustr. Head coach Jon Cooper and assistant Rob Zettler are also on the list.

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But NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman decided that games will continue after putting the season on hiatus for six days and the schedule will resume with three games on Tuesday.

The question is how much longer can this continue as teams run out of players who must spend 10 days in quarantine after testing positive? The Canadiens are already out of the playoff race, but COVID-19 could decide other playoff positions as much, if not more, than anything else.

The Lightning, for example, do not have their two goalkeepers and could have an AHL call on the network for their next five games.

Long before COVID, the flu spread through NHL locker rooms like wildfire. Players are constantly together in tight spaces, be it in the locker room, on the bench, on a plane or for team meals. We are quickly learning how contagious the Omicron variant is, even among those vaccinated, so we can expect the number of NHL cases to continue to rise.

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While closing the NHL until the New Year may seem like a good idea, will the situation be much different in another week?

“It’s just a different world,” said Brendan Gallagher of the Canadiens, who spent 10 days in quarantine after being listed on the COVID-19 protocol on Dec. 2. “Before, when you had the flu, you played. You would come to the court and try to stay away (from other players). You would get your water bottle separate and do what you can to prevent it from spreading. But you were there to play the game. Now, to be honest, a lot of the guys feel asymptomatic or, if you’re like me, you have symptoms. But you still feel like maybe you could be out there, but you are forced to stay away for 10 days and that’s why. We are trying to stay safe and stop the spread as best we can.

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“Our guys here have done a really good job,” added Gallagher. “Most of the time, when we’ve had positive cases, it hasn’t really spread. This time, obviously, it is. Try to limit it, try to do the best we can. Trust the protocols you have. At the same time, you have to focus and understand that we have a job to do. “

The current spike in NHL COVID-19 cases could have something to do with players returning home to visit relatives over the Christmas holidays.

“To be honest, I’m not sure where everyone was exactly,” Gallagher said. “A lot of guys stayed here, they spent time with their family. Personally, I went back to Vancouver, saw my family there. Some boys left, some boys were here. Returning guys, we were pretty cautious with our families and made sure you guys keep them safe too. We also understood what our situation was. “

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It certainly looks like COVID-19 isn’t going away anytime soon, so the NHL will try to keep the season going to the best of its ability.

The Canadiens have returned to video conferencing for all media interviews and after Monday’s practice I asked head coach Dominique Ducharme, who tested positive for COVID-19 during the playoffs last season, what is the level of concern. inside the locker room now when it comes to catching the virus.

“Everyone’s in the know, so everyone is more careful in here, making sure that whatever they ask us to do is done by everyone and they do it all the time,” he said. “We know that it is part of the situation at the moment, but not only for our team. If we look at the province and the country and the whole world, it is more or less the same. We are cautious but, at the same time, we know that it is a difficult time right now. Hopefully it will go away and be back to normal as soon as possible. “

As this pandemic drags on, it is becoming increasingly difficult to remember what was normal.

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