Do what you have to do for the rest of this season, but if covid is still a significant presence in our lives next season (I think it will be to some varying degrees) then either stop testing people altogether or just f***in stop testing people with no symptoms.
I would bet that by the end of this season about 80% (I wonder if that's a fair guess or if it's even more than that? It can't be much less than that) of players and maybe even coaches and support staff/people involved with the team will have tested positive at least once at some point over the last two seasons and quite a decent amount in both seasons, as we've already seen several guys end up on our covid list two years in a row.
So what are we gonna do, sit players that have had the virus 2-3 times in the last 2-3 years? They're much more of a threat to the general public (who are far away from the players at games) than the other guys in the locker room and players on other teams, who by that point will have had it 2-3 times already (asymptomatic for the last 2 or maybe all 3) and if you keep trying to look for these problems then they're gonna pop up. How many seasons do we need to go through this? We've even seen players and general managers express this over the last several weeks. I think this is one thing that the general consensus of people involved (fans, employees) with the NHL will come to an agreement on. That doesn't mean it will be the law of the league though.
I don’t care about next season right now?
You don’t know what version of this we’ll be dealing with in the future, historically global pandemics have faded after a couple of years and X number of waves.
Asymptomatic players are on the COVID protocol list for 5 days. It’s not that draconian.
The big problem/controversy the NHL is facing right now is Canada won’t let teams have any paying customers watch games (well more than 250 or whatever) and the NHL isn’t willing to tank revenue by having empty arena games. That’s where the bulk of the cancellations are coming from now.
I’d rather swallow ground glass than “discuss” the COVID government policy of country on the internet so I don’t want to get into the COVID/government policy debates over it. We can discuss the effects on the NHL though.
The NHL can only postpone for so long even with the February Olympics cushion. The Jets were proposing to play some home games in Saskatoon (Saskatchewan doesn’t have restrictions). It’s a mess.