The Vancouver Canucks season remains quiet as a COVID-19 outbreak that hit the team went from worse to worse.
The team added seven players to the league’s COVID protocol list on Saturday, bringing the total number of players to 14. Sources told ESPN that two coaches have been added to the list, reducing the total number of coaches in protocol to three.
Seven players and a coach were already on the list, asking the NHL to postpone Canucks games until April 8, and the training facility would soon open on April 6.
According to sources, the recent additions of Canucks to the protocol list may keep them out of action for even longer. The Vancouver region recently became a hotspot for the P.1 Brazilian variant of the virus.
The Canucks are the second Canadian team to experience COVID problems. At the end of March, four games were postponed in Montreal Canadiens, but have since gone back into action. The NHL has now postponed 45 games due to COVID, although the first 37 postponements were only for the American teams.
For Vancouver, the case began Tuesday when Adam Gaudette was taken out of practice after a positive test result, which was confirmed positive later that evening. Travis Hamonic joined Gaudette on the protocol list on Thursday. By Friday, Alex Edler, Braden Holtby, Quinn Hughes, Zack MacEwen and Antoine Roussel were also all added to the list, after additional testing and contract tracking.
Gaudette’s wife, Micaela, tweeted on Thursday: “My husband is not well, but I take good care of him!”
Micaela Gaudette also tweeted: “You get sick with a virus we do not know much about and everyone is angry with him because you can not watch a hockey game.”
Travis Boyd, Thatcher Demko, Jayce Hawryluk, Bo Horvat, Tyler Motte, Tyler Myers and Brandon Sutter were added to the list on Saturday.