COVID-19 and the NHL: A Rocky Relationship

The 2021 National Hockey League season started off relatively swiftly, a few COVID cases here and there, but overall, began on a good foot. However, making the decision to not have bubble play, as did the National Basketball Association, has arguably come back to bite the NHL. 

Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly recognized the risk involved telling ESPN NHL writers, “I obviously did not expect to have kind of the perfect record we had in the bubble [last summer]. We were introducing a lot more risk and certainly there’s a lot more interactions going on.” The season is about a little over a month into play and the league has had to adjust their protocols multiple times. 

First Phase: No travel outside of the rink or hotel, and no socializing in hotels unless the space had been approved by the league.

Second Phase: Teams must remove the glass behind benches to best increase the airflow in the rink. The league also told players that they couldn’t arrive at the rink until one hour and 45 minutes before the puck drops, though this was later loosened because of player complaints.

Third Phase: One of the larger changes was to start using rapid tests on game days and make further changes on ice for airflow. 

While these increasing changes are helping both discover more cases closer to game time and changing operations around the arenas, cases still continue to rise, and games still continue to be postponed. Daly however was not necessarily shocked by this, stating, “Would I have hoped for less cases and fewer outbreaks among clubs? The answer to that is yes. Whether I can say it was a surprise to me, I’m not sure it necessarily is,” he said.“ 

So far this season, the NHL has officially postponed 35 games and placed numerous players on the COVID Protocol Related Absences list, for positive tests and contact tracing. Most noticeable was the New Jersey Devils who about two weeks ago had 17 players on the absence list. Daly knows that a conclusive solution might not be in the NHL’s future revealing “I know people want definitive answers on what is your plan if ‘X’ happens; well, tell me what ‘X’ is and when that happens, and tell you what our plan is. I think we do have to have that flexibility to make those decisions.”

Falling back on a bubble format may be logistically impossible, but the NHL league office has not pushed it off the table totally. The reason for creating new divisions this season was to allow for players to not be fully stuck in arena’s while at the same time allowing safe regional travel. 

A bubble would change this format as well as guidelines put in by teams and generally is not an idea backed by players. When considering the mental and physical strain that the bubble put on athletes, the players are not fully interested in the idea. The league looks to a hope of lowering cases and the continuation of games with various adjustments to game operations and protocols.