Interviews after Tuesday’s Blackhawks practice were held in an awkward and unusual setting: not in the locker room per usual, but in a formal press conference setting in a side room of Fifth-Third Arena.
The decision was made Monday by the NHL to restrict locker room access only to players and important team personnel, shifting media access to exclusively formal and distanced settings.
The coronavirus fears sweeping the globe are certainly serious. But to the Hawks, the absurdity of Tuesday’s situation prompted more awkward jokes than grave warnings.
Defenseman Connor Murphy said he was “not too worried” about contracting the virus.
“I’m sure it’s just a precautionary thing that the league’s taking,” he said. “As long as we don’t pick our nose too much, we should be good.”
The NHL has instructed players to take some individual precautions, some of which are universally logical — wash hands, use sanitizer — and some of which are more specific, like bringing their own markers to sign autographs instead of using markers borrowed from fans.
The league has prior familiarity with contagious diseases, too, as the flu spreading through locker rooms is a semi-common occurrence — it happened to the Canadiens just this January. A 2014 mumps outbreak in NHL circles required some additional precautions.
“That was crazy. I remember teams were having guys have their own water bottles and just telling us be careful with not sharing towels...as if that was going to be something to be aware of for showering,” Murphy said, laughing again.
Dylan Strome, whose scheduled public appearance at a local car dealership Tuesday afternoon was canceled by the Hawks, echoed Murphy’s lack of concern. It seemed as though he would’ve been happy to make the appearance after all.
“This whole thing came out a few months ago or so?” Strome asked, rhetorically. “We’ve done a lot of things since then. We had [Brent Seabrook’s] bowling event, we had a bunch of other things, we’ve had games, we’ve signed autographs for fans after games, before games, on the road for fans in different cities.”
“It is what it is. I’m not going to really change who I am too much,” he added. “We have some hand sanitizer. There’s not much else we can do. Just go about our daily life.”
Even Jeremy Colliton, rarely a jokester, quipped he was simply going to “keep washing his hands” during the hysteria.
As for the length of the washing? “Long enough.”
All told, there was clearly more anxiety about the fate of the season — with just 13 games left, the Hawks’ playoff chances stand at about three percent — than Coronavirus, even though the Sharks team the Hawks will host Wednesday is coincidentally perhaps the most affected by the virus so far. (San Jose faces the possibility of playing its final five home games at an empty arena or neutral site due to a new county ban on public gatherings.)
The Hawks, meanwhile, have eight home games left, and the organization has not indicated any additional precautionary measures other than the media separation are coming.
Filling the United Center doesn’t seem likely to become a problem, either. Only 15 percent of Chicagoan voters in a Twitter poll Tuesday said coronavirus fears have affected their likelihood of attending a game in the coming weeks.
Among those not planning to attend a game, 57 percent cited the Hawks’ poor play as the primary reason, whereas only 11 percent cited coronavirus.
Note: The Hawks recalled prospect defenseman Nicolas Beaudin from the AHL on Tuesday. The 2018 first-round pick could join Brandon Hagel in making his NHL debut this week.
