Morning Skate: Farce

Not to be Mr. Sour Grapes, as the Bruins weren’t the better team in last night’s loss to the New York Islanders, but did anyone watching think “boy, this is an enjoyable experience” The shorthanded Bruins threw 41 pucks on net but skated out of town with a 3-1 loss, which was probably to be expected given the players they were missing.

Shortly after the game ended, NESN’s Dale Arnold mentioned that by his estimation, 9% of the NHL’s players are currently in COVID-19 protocol.

This, of course, raises the question: what are we doing here?

The NHL is clearly dealing with an outbreak, though “dealing with” might be generous. Since playing the infectious Calgary Flames, the Bruins have had a new player or staff member enter protocol nearly every day.

Yet in that time, the league decided to let the B’s play Vegas and, last night, the Islanders. Would it really shock anyone if either of those teams starts to see a rise in cases in the next week?

Now, the B’s face Canadian chaos this coming weekend, as they’re scheduled to head north of the border for two games. Saturday’s game is in Montreal, which was asked by the province to not allow fans for Thursday’s game against the Flyers. Some observers have expressed concern about what would happen to a Bruin if, for example, he tests positive the morning of the Montreal game, once in Canada.

In a Tweet yesterday, Fluto Shinzawa indicated that the Bruins thought they’d be able to drive said player back to the United States, which I guess is better than being left in Canada for a while.

(Is it really, though? That’d be quite a car ride.)

It all seems a little crazy, but I guess that’s reality now.

It seems like the league is determined to ride this out, so it’ll be interesting to see if it gets worse before it gets better.

Today’s discussion topic

Are you in the “whatever, just play through it” camp or the “league should probably shut down for a week or so” camp?

Or do you not like camping? That’s OK too.