B.C. health officials are telling the National Hockey League not to expect any special consideration when it comes to the province determining if professional hockey teams can travel to Vancouver.
Health Minister Adrian Dix said Monday that the province just received a copy of the NHL’s plan, which is being reviewed.
“Dr. Henry, our provincial health officers are medical health officers are extraordinarily busy right now. This is an intense time,” Dix said.
“The NHL has provided what they’re proposing to do. And now we’ll take a look at it. I think it’s reasonable, having received the plan over the weekend, that we reflect on that for more than a few hours.”
The NHL and the NHL Players’ Association settled on a plan for the upcoming season on Sunday.
Provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry will have to sign off on any plan where NHL teams will travel to play the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Arena.
The league and union agreed to a 56-game schedule that will have Canada’s seven teams play in a newly-created North Division because of border restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
But most Canadian jurisdictions that are home to NHL franchises have not signed off on the plan. Officials in Ontario and Manitoba, along with British Columbia, said on Monday the plan is still being reviewed.
The NHL wants to play games in the home arenas of participating teams, but is prepared to hold them in one or more “neutral-site” venues per division if necessary.
The league resumed the pandemic-interrupted 2019-20 season this past summer thanks to tightly-controlled “bubbles” in both Edmonton and Toronto.
There were zero positive tests for COVID-19, according to the NHL, but the setup wore on participants.
Dix indicated he is supportive of a bubble model, potentially more so than teams travelling in and out.
“You’ll know that the NHL ran a successful bubble in the summer and the season had a season and a couple of bubbles across Canada,” Dix said.
“Actually, in that case, at a time when overall case counts were a lot lower.”
The B.C. government said it will respond to the league in the days to come, but Henry made it clear the NHL will not receive special accommodations.
“It’s what’s happening in the face of the pandemic, what we’re doing, what we’re asking everybody to do right now, so all of those are considerations that we have to take into account,” Henry said.
“I think some of the public messaging from the NHL gives the impression of pressure. But, you know, we’re doing what we do with everything. We’re looking at the evidence. We’re looking at the plans. We’re having discussions about what the impacts of those would be.”
–with files from the Canadian Press