The Vancouver Canucks season is on hiatus as a COVID-19 outbreak that hit the team went from bad to worse.
The team added seven players to the COVID protocol list in the league on Saturday, bringing the total number of players to 14. Sources told ESPN that two coaches were added to the list, reducing the total number of coaches in the protocol to three.
Seven players and a coach were already on the roster, prompting the NHL to postpone the Canucks until April 8, with the training facility opening no earlier than April 6.
According to sources, Canucks’ recent additions to the protocol list could keep them out of action even longer. The Vancouver region has recently become a hotspot for the Brazilian P.1 version of the virus.
Canucks is the second team in Canada to have problems with COVID. The Montreal Canadiens had four games postponed to the end of March, but have since returned to action. The NHL has now postponed 45 games because of COVID, although the first 37 postponements were all for teams in the United States.
For Vancouver, the problem began on Tuesday, when Adam Gaudette was withdrawn from practice following a positive test result, which was confirmed positively later that evening.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 added to the list after additional testing and contract tracking.
Gaudette’s wife, Micaela, wrote on Twitter on Thursday: “My husband is not in excellent shape, but I take good care of him!”
Micaela Gaudette also posted on Twitter: “A human being gets sick of a virus we don’t know much about and you get mad at him because you can’t watch a game of hockey.”
Travis Boyd, Thatcher Demko, Jayce Hawryluk, Bo Horvat, Tyler Motte, Tyler Myers and Brandon Sutter were added to the list on Saturday.