An abundance of caution

An abundance of caution

by

On Wednesday, the NHL had two fun announcements.

The first announcement was that the Minnesota Game has been quiet for a week due to a COVID outbreak, and joined five other teams that added to their COVID version evasion list.

The second announcement was that the Nashville Predators are super psyched to welcome fans back into their arena this month.

If you feel the dissonance there, get ready for this next part.

Elliotte Friedman on Thursday morning announced some changes the NHL is making to arena logistics “in an effort to slow the spread of the virus”:

  • Removing glass behind couches
  • Keep players and coaches away from the arena until 1:45 before falling
  • Add space between locker stalls to get six feet between players
  • “Consider” (!) “Ask” (!!) teams to use HEPA air cleaners behind benches

That’s it. Three small changes that will be ineffective plus the consideration of possible ask teams to maybe do something.

These changes may spur a broad slowdown in the spread of the disease, but it will obviously not matter. This is hockey. This is the screaming and spitting sport.

This is especially the hug sport.




Screenshots courtesy of NBC Sports Washington

So this is just theater.

At the moment we know of outbreaks with Buffalo, Chicago, Minnesota, New Jersey and Washington. Colorado, Dallas, Detroit, LA, Pittsburgh, Vegas and Winnipeg have all experienced recent outbreaks or at least lost players on the COVID absence list. Ninety players were on the list. Twenty-two matches were postponed. And at least one player has suffered a major setback due to COVID.

On Wednesday, the NWHL, which had limited travel and fewer players, had to cancel its season / tournament due to COVID outbreaks.

Anyone who thinks this works just does not pay attention.

Meanwhile, it

But we’re still going to do it, because the league’s requirement requires it. The players will not make a bubble again, and the owners must make the profit. Outbreaks and diseases and the consequent deaths of vulnerable people that we will not know about for months or years are just the cost of doing business. The disease is four times more common than the teams were in the bubble last summer. Now there is no bubble, more viruses and more travel.

So the guys are going to go on the ice and hit their plate fights and hit each other in the helmet and scream in each other’s faces, and then they’ll come back to spit from a couch that slightly improved the airflow or hyperventilate in a locker room. where they are slightly further apart.

For the record, I am also complicit in this. I watch games, write stories and sell things related to hockey. And you read me, which is a strange choice for you, but you do too.

Yet I stick with this hypothetical: what would the NHL need now to stop it? Half the teams get an outbreak? The absence list hits three digits? Someone die?

(Someone will die. Someone is probably already deceased, but they were the elderly relative of some support staff, and we can not be positive that they got sick from league activities, and that gives us all enough separation not to feel guilty not for that.)

I do not know what to do with all this fear. I only know the next time I see someone say they are taking any action out of an ‘abundance of caution’, I call bullshit.

Bullshit.

Source