Nashville Predators: Week Ahead in Doubt Due to Covid Spikes?

For the third-straight reguluar season the Nashville Predators and the rest of the NHL is having their calendar of games disrupted by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic and the protocols that come with it.

The Predators were due to play the Calgary Flames at home on Tuesday night, but that games was postponed to an unkown later date due to the Flames now having 10 different members of their organization in the covid protocols, with nine of those being skater, per The Calgary Sun.

This unfortunate trend is stretching league-wide and making the hope for NHL players playing the Olympics in February look more and more grim.

The Predators don’t have a major covid outbreak within their own team at the moment that has been confirmed, but Frank Seravalli of Daily Faceoff there could be additional positive covid cases on the team:

We’ll have to patienty wait to see if more players on the Nashville Predators enter the covid protocols, which further complicates their scheduled games against the Colorado Avalanche on Thursday and the Chicago Blackhawks on Friday. They’ve also missed two practices as they try to get everyone presumably tested and keep it from becoming a larger outbreak.

It’s very possible that the Predators end up missing at least three games in a row on their schedule, which would bring the total to four games postponed on the season.

How might this affect the current Nashville Predators hot streak?

While it’s always nice to get a break from the grueling grind of an 82-game hockey season, it’s also unfortunate to come at a time when everything is clicking. The Predators are on a five-game win streak, and won eight of their last 11 games dating back to a November 22 win over the Anaheim Ducks.

In fact, the Predators have lost just four games over the last five weeks. It’s a shame that they might lose some of that momentum with an unexpected break that might force them to not play a game for a full week.

The break will give time for Matt Duchene to get back onto the ice as he’s been designated as day-to-day with an upper-body injury and missed the last two games. So there is that bright spot to the matchup being postponed.

Aside from that, the Predators are actually close to being a fully healthy team. They are waiting to get Ryan Johansen out of covid protocols, but aside from that the team’s not dealing with any major injury concerns.

My overall feeling is this isn’t a break you want when you’re in the middle of playing some of your best hockey you’ve consistently played under Head Coach John Hynes.

Options for the NHL as the season is getting disrupted

The first thought is the NHL might decide to put the season on a temporary pause, which gives us all bad memories from March 2020 when it was also called a “pause” initially. As the pandemic grew worse and worse, the leage  had to scramble to come up with a “return to play” plan in the bubbles to eventually crown a Stanley Cup champion.

While I don’t think the regular season is going to get cancelled, I do think it’s very likely that the NHL in the Olympics isn’t feasible anymore. You have a block of three weeks in February where the NHL is going to have to reschedule all these postponed games.

The other option, which is one I’m fully on board with, is to expand roster allowances much like the taxi squads from last season. Allow teams to call-up more players to have on reserve in case there’s a small outbreak so that we can still get these games played and avoid too many more postponements piling up.

The NHL and NHLPA is likely having a formal discussion regarding the matter Tuesday or Wednesday to talk about options, per Emily Kaplan of ESPN:

If the NHL doesn’t plan on temporarily pausing the season or opting out of the Olympics participation, then it’s really hard to understand how they’re going to navigate through this. The opt-out date is January 10 for the Olympics.

We expect to learn more about the fate of Thursday’s game at home against the Avalanche at some point on Wednesday. We’ll update this article when that information is announced.