After an outbreak of COVID-19 within the team, Vegas Golden Knights general manager Kelly McCrimmon says the club is optimistic its games against the Los Angeles Kings this weekend will be played as scheduled.
“We’re pleased to say that those people [who tested positive] are all healthy and doing well,” McCrimmon said, in a statement transcribed to the Golden Knights’ Twitter account Monday. “We’ve now had four days of all negative tests, which is encouraging. Our expectation is to continue this week as scheduled with games against LA this weekend.”
Three coaches, one player on the roster and one player on the taxi squad are in COVID-19 protocols after at least some of the people in that group tested positive for the virus. The player on the roster is Alex Pietrangelo, who was added to the NHL’s publicly available COVID-19 list on Thursday.
The Golden Knights played one game against the St. Louis Blues without their coaching staff after the group was isolated due to a positive COVID-19 test. After that, three games — one against the Blues and two against the San Jose Sharks — were postponed as more COVID-19 cases were discovered. The game against the Blues has since been rescheduled for March 22 while the games against the Sharks will now be played on Feb. 13 and 25.
According to McCrimmon, the team plans to resume practices on Wednesday and Thursday before returning to game action against the Los Angeles Kings on Friday.
The NHL has postponed 11 games so far in the first three weeks of the season after COVID-19 outbreaks among the Dallas Stars, Carolina Hurricanes and Golden Knights. On Saturday, Sportsnet’s Chris Johnston reported that if the number of postponed games continues to rise to an unmanageable level, the NHL is prepared to extend the regular season and delay the start of the playoffs to make up the games.
“If these spill on beyond the regular season, the NHL feels it has seven-to-10 days of buffer before it needs to start the playoffs, so even if everything isn’t crammed in by May 8, there is still a little bit of room there to play with,” Johnston said on Saturday Headlines during Hockey Night in Canada.
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