Originally set to re-open their facilities for practice on Sunday, the Vancouver Canucks will be unable to do so until at least Monday, the NHL announced.
An additional Canucks player was entered into the league’s COVID-19 protocols on Sunday. The player had not been around the team since March 31, but the NHL, NHLPA and Vancouver medical groups all “determined that the prudent decision was to keep the facilities closed for an additional day.”
Pending further test results, the plan is for Vancouver to still return to game play on April 16 versus Edmonton following their teamwide COVID-19 outbreak.
The league rescheduled the Canucks’ eight postponed games with the team’s 56-game schedule to end on May 16. The NHL will continue to assess the progression of the regular season before announcing definitive dates for the start of the Stanley Cup Playoffs, which could result in the North Division beginning the first round of playoffs later than the other divisions.
Regarding the COVID-19 situation, team physician Jim Bovard, M.D., highlighted that there was “no culprit here other than the COVID virus itself” in a press conference alongside general manager Jim Benning on Friday.
The Canucks’ number of COVID-19 positive results had grown to 25, the team announced Wednesday, with 21 of those being players (three players from the taxi squad) and four members on the team’s staff. One additional player is considered a close contact.
Bovard added that cases within the team are starting to slow, which will allow the organization to move on from the new infection phase to start dealing with the infection itself, before moving on to the recovery phase.
Thankfully, the players are now on the “other side” of the virus, with no hospitalizations to date, according to Bovard. He also re-confirmed that the strain was indeed a variant of the virus.
“We’re going to have a lot of games in a short period of time,” Benning said.
