The Carolina Hurricanes’ game against the Minnesota Wild, scheduled for Tuesday night in St. Paul, Minnesota, has been postponed after four more Canes players tested positive for COVID-19.
According to a release from the NHL, the decision was made following consultation by the NHL’s, NHLPA’s and club’s medical groups. Ian Cole, Steven Lorentz, Jordan Staal and Andrei Svechnikov all tested positive Tuesday, the team said.
The Hurricanes were one of the first teams last season to be stricken with a round of COVID-related postponements, and with cases across the NHL rising exponentially each day this past week, the Canes will once again have to take some time off, beginning with Tuesday’s game against the Minnesota Wild.
The Canes, who were set to get a pair of defensemen back into the lineup Tuesday after they cleared the league’s COVID-19 protocols, learned Monday that two forwards — top scorer Sebastian Aho and rookie Seth Jarvis — and a trainer tested positive in Canada and had to remain behind in Vancouver to quarantine.
“I don’t know what else there is to do,” Canes coach Rod Brind’Amour said Tuesday. “Guys are testing all the time, masking up. It is what it is right now. Everybody is getting this thing. Fortunately the good news they’re not getting sick. ... But they’re paying the price for it. Just sitting there is super frustrating. I feel for those guys.”
Cole addressed the media Tuesday before it was announced he had tested positive for COVID and was asked about the challenges of getting this season in.
“I think it will be challenging for sure,” Cole said. “It’s one of those things where unfortunately this is the world we live in. We’ve got to be careful. We don’t want it to spread to the whole team. We don’t want it to shut down and have to tack on (games) to the end of the season. That’s probably the worst-case scenario.”
But the list grew again, making playing in Minnesota on Tuesday night impossible. In all, nine Canes have now tested positive for COVID-19 in the past three weeks.
Ethan Bear was the first player to test positive on Nov. 22, followed by Brett Pesce and Tony DeAngelo, who were unable to join the team on its Canadian road trip after completing quarantine because they weren’t allowed to cross the border. They met the team in St. Paul and were prepared to play Tuesday.
“It’s frustrating,” defenseman Jaccob Slavin said Tuesday. “But you’ve got to roll with the punches. It’s the game we’re living in right now and you just have to roll with it.
“Every year has a lot of adversity, and it is always the teams in the end who battle through that adversity that winds up winning. This is our adversity right now.”
The Hurricanes are now the fourth team to have at least one game postponed after the Flames joined the Ottawa Senators and New York Islanders, who had games postponed last month. The Canes played in Calgary last Thursday. More than 23 players across the league are now on the NHL’s COVID-19 reserve list.
Staff writers Luke DeCock and Chip Alexander contributed to this story.
