Harsh Poonia
Vancouver: December 20th, 2021 – The Vancouver Canucks back-to-back home games on Saturday against the Toronto Maple leafs and Sunday against the Arizona Coyotes this past weekend all got cancelled due to multiply players on all three teams getting put on the Covid 19 protocol list. Along with those games the Canucks upcoming games this Tuesday away against the San Jose Sharks and home against the Anaheim Ducks on Thursday also got cancelled due to the restricted border travels put in place by health officials. A total of 39 games of been postponed already league wide by the NHL due to the Omicron variant spread in the league. These games will be played later decided at a different time, there’s no time frame on when the postponed games will be played at.
More breaking news today is that the NHL and NHLPA have agreed to pause the entire NHL season and shutdown everything immediately including practices and will resume after Christmas day on the 26th so that testing will resume sooner instead of starting on the 27th like how it was supposed to be. This comes as no surprise because of all the teams that were already shut down until after the Christmas break anyways. The biggest reason for shutting down the season right now is because players don’t want to be stuck in quarantine over the holiday break without their families, if this outbreak was in the middle of November or even after the break the season wouldn’t have been stopped.
The NHL and NHLPA have also decided on not to send NHL players to China for the 2022 Olympics, although not confirmed officially by the league yet, many reliable outside sources have all confirmed this news. It’s just a matter of time until the NHL confirms it themselves. This would be the result due to the strict Covid protocols set in place and the current outbreak going on currently. If a player were to test positive for any variant of Covid they would be required to quarantine alone in China for about 3-4 weeks depending on symptoms and be without pay for all the NHL games, they miss due to quarantine. Most players have decided against that and would rather opt out of the Olympic games and not miss more time and money with their teams then they already have.
With some positive Canucks news, they’re search for a new GM continues with a bunch more interviews that were being held over the weekend. Notably they had interviews with 2 female candidates. This is big news because no NHL franchise has had a female GM or assistant GM in the 100-year history of the NHL has been around. Jim Rutherford, the new Canucks President of Hockey Operations has told the media multiply times in his media availability interviews that he just doesn’t want another “white man” in the front office of the Canucks, he wants diversity whether it’s of race, age, or gender, this is a huge step in diversity progress for the entire league not just for the Canucks. It would be a great look for the league if this happens as the NHL has been known for not being as progressive as other leagues like the NBA or even the NFL. But if it does happen it shouldn’t be just for media attention and publicity, the job should go to the person who Jim Rutherford thinks is the right fit for the Canucks to take them in the right direction towards a championship.