The Vancouver Canucks season continues to pause while an outbreak of COVID-19 that hit the team went from bad 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 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 list, prompting the NHL to postpone Canucks games until April 8, with the training facility opening on April 6 only.
According to sources, Canucks’ recent additions to the protocol list may keep them out of action for even longer. The Vancouver region has recently become a hotspot for the Brazilian variant P.1 of the virus.
The Canucks are the second Canadian-based team to have problems with COVID. Montreal Canadiens had four games postponed in late March, but have since returned to action. The NHL has now postponed 45 games due to COVID, although the first 37 postponements were all for teams based in the United States.
For Vancouver, the problem started on Tuesday, when Adam Gaudette was dropped from training after a positive test result, which was confirmed positive later that night. Travis Hamonic joined Gaudette on the protocol list on Thursday. On Friday, Alex Edler, Braden Holtby, Quinn Hughes, Zack MacEwen and Antoine Roussel were also added to the list, after further testing and contract tracking.
Gaudette’s wife, Micaela, tweeted on Thursday: “My husband is not doing very well, but I am taking good care of him!”
Micaela Gaudette also tweeted: “A human being gets sick with a virus that we don’t know much about and you are angry with him because you can’t 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.