What was becoming increasingly inevitable over the past few days finally happened. The NHL officially postponed games and practices through the holiday break. With Wednesday’s slate of games already postponed due to COVID outbreaks around the league, the NHL announced that they would also postpone Thursday’s slate of games before the holiday shutdown as well.
Thursday originally had 5 games scheduled, however teams will break for the previously agreed upon holiday shutdown early in an effort to curb rising numbers amongst players and staff. Under the new schedule, December 22nd through 25th will be off days for all team related purposes including travel.
Prior to the announcement late Monday, 11 teams had already ceased operations and cross border games had been halted. This now brings the total number of games that need to be rescheduled to 49, with no end in sight.
According to a statement from the league “Players will report back to their teams Sunday, which shall be used for testing, practice and/or travel only. Upon return from the holiday break to team facilities, no individual in the team’s traveling party shall enter the facility (other than for testing purposes) until they have a negative test result. Any practice scheduled for Sunday must begin after 2 p.m. local time.”
The NHL & NHLPA also issued new COVID protocols for teams and players including a return to daily testing (previously they had been testing every 3 days). The league’s regular season schedule is currently slated to resume on December 27th, however whether this materializes or not is anyone’s guess at this point.
The Boston Bruins and New York Islanders currently have the fewest games played in the NHL at this point with 26 apiece. Anaheim has the most completed games heading into the holiday shutdown with 32. Unlike last year, the NHL isn’t providing a daily case count for players, though TSN is reporting that the number could be as high as 15% of the league at this point.
-Kyle Skinner
Twitter: @JKyleSkinner