Six Canucks and a staff member are now under covid protocols. At least their next four games are ppd, with an Apr. 8 return, at the earliest, now looking increasingly unlikely. The city of Vancouver is currently the worst spot, on the entre freaking planet, for the Brazilian covid variant, with 430 cases. There’s more testing tomorrow, and fears that more will go down. Playing all 19 remaining games, with 34 days to go, will be an impossibilty, and there’s talk that the rest of their season could be pooched.
Crossing fingers for no more superspreader events like Buffalo and Jersey at the beginnig of this season when both teams head to take two weeks off.
Yeah, it seems to me they have to concede a number of remaining games; completion is not possible. That said, forfeiting isn’t necessary. You just don’t play them, and if that means the Canucks don’t have enough points to make the playoffs, that’s just how it is.
The Canucks are already on the outside looking in anyway. They’re six points behind Montreal and Montreal has games in hand and is a better team however you look at it, so in all likelihood Vancouver wasn’t making it anyway. (There is a striking separation in the Northern division between the four good teams and the three bad ones.) Better safe than sorry.
I don’t know which games they are going to miss, but it seems unfair for the teams they were going to play not to get the points they couldn’t have gotten. Unless you mean that when they concede the game, the other team gets the points? If so, I’m not sure I understand the difference between conceding and forfeiting.
The important point, of course, is that it looks like the Islanders will make the playoffs unless they really fall apart in the last 18 games or whatever.
While it’s not fair to those teams, the unfairness is spread around. I mean the games don’t happen. No points at all. Handing out points is just as unfair; the only thing that matters is how many points teams get in relation to one another. This is Vancouver’s remaining schedule by opponent:
Calgary: 3
Oilers: 4
Leafs: 4
Sens: 4
They have no remaining games against Winnipeg or Montreal and Montreal is the only team they have a shot at catching if they were to play all the games. Eliminating their games entirely effectively puts Montreal out of reach. Just cancelling a bunch of Canucks games will eliminate Vancouver, and they are likely out anyway, and should be the team that takes the brunt of it.
Where cancelling the games might have an effect is on seeding; the Oilers and Jets are tied with 47 points, so cancelling four Oilers games while cancelling no Jets games gives the Jets a huge advantage in giving them the opportunity to pick up lots of points the Oilers now can’t get. But the reverse is also true - if you call all those games forfeits you hand the Oilers eight free points and the Jets zero free points. At least in the former case the Jets do have to go out and win the points. There is no easy call here but I think just discounting the games is the least bad solution.
Similarly, a forfeit approach actually gives Calgary a shot at catching Montreal; six free points ties them with Montreal in points. Montreal still has five games in hand, which is a hell of a big edge, but it’s not insurmountable. Cancelling the games is much fairer in the case of that matchup.
In the East division, we had some problems with the Devils and Sabres, but that was early enough to reschedule the games. Boston had an issue as well, but I think they will be able to make those up as well. Fingers crossed!
Since this is the only active NHL thread, I thought I’d post this here.
The Isles picked up Palmieri and Zajac from the Devils. Looks like they’re hoping to make a deep run. If these additions are as good as the Pageau one, they may be a real threat.
Well, for the first time in about three weeks, the Canucks will play Sunday against Edmonton. Only remaining players on covid are Jake Vertanin and Nate Schmidt. The team will have an extra two days of just skating to try to find their legs, but I’m conerned about this weekend - no one knows what to expect, at all. I’ll bet by the third period they’ll doing 20 second shifts. I just hope they don’t get steamrolled.
Even coach Travis Green is still a question mark for Sunday.
About 10 games left and only Vegas has clinched a playoff berth. Only the Sabres and Devils are eliminated from playoff contention. I guess that’s because every game remaining is against someone else in the division, so things can still really move around.
Marleau also has the 5th longest iron man streak ever, and is only 14 games from 2nd place and 64 games away from the record. He’s played 900 consecutive games(!) dating back to 2009(!). He hasn’t missed a game since before John Tavares was drafted.
The Canucks will have to barrell through 14 games in the next 22 days.
That’s almost insurmountably ridiculous, and, just coming off covid, it could be interesting, and not really the good kind of interesting.
Can the NHL punish a team for deciding to forfeit? The Canucks aren’t going to make the playoffs, so if I was them I would seriously consider forfeiting some games, especially ones that don’t have playoff implications for other teams. Or just call up the entire roster of the Utica Comets.
Assuming that’s Utica, NY, then it might not help – the players would probably have to quarantine for a couple of weeks anyway.
The should definitely try and skip any games without playoff implications. Looking the standings, though, it looks like all the teams could still make the playoffs, at least theoretically.
