Edmonton Oilers centre Ryan Nugent-Hopkins has been placed on COVID-19 protocol, the team announced on Friday.
Nugent-Hopkins played Thursday night when the Oilers hosted the Columbus Blue Jackets at Rogers Place.
Two other Oilers players have already entered the National Hockey League’s COVID-19 protocol this week: centre Ryan McLeod and forward Devin Shore.
Head coach Dave Tippett was also placed in the league’s COVID-19 protocol earlier this week.
The Oilers are supposed to travel south, where they’re slated to play the Seattle Kraken on Saturday night. The team told Global News it delayed its flight to Seattle until all of the members’ COVID-19 tests are back.
In an update Friday evening, the team said the flight was rescheduled to leave around 7:30 p.m.
Prior to departing, defenceman Duncan Keith was placed into COVID protocol. Kris Russell was put on long-term injured reserve while Marcus Niemelainen was put on injured reserve.
Forwards Seth Griffith and Cooper Marody were called up from Bakersfield. Griffith is the Condors leading scorer with 18 points in 18 games. He last played in the NHL with Buffalo in 2017/18. Marody has 15 points in 18 games in Bakersfield. He played six games for the Oilers in 2018/19.
A team spokesperson said NHL protocol calls for testing every 72 hours and the Oilers exceed that; however, the team wouldn’t go into specifics.
The Oilers and Kraken are on 630 CHED Saturday with the Face-off Show at 6:30 p.m. The game will start at 8 p.m.
There’s been an explosion of COVID-19 outbreaks around the league. Earlier this week, a number of Calgary Flames games were postponed. So far, 19 players and several other staffers were put in the protocol as well.
The Flames confirmed that some of the cases are the Omicron variant of concern.
With almost the entire team in quarantine, the NHL said it was delaying Calgary’s return to the ice until at least through Saturday.
Already dealing with a backlog of 10 postponed games, the NHL on Thursday was looking at the possibility of more scheduling headaches.
On Thursday night, the Montreal Canadiens hosted the Philadelphia Flyers without fans after receiving a request from Quebec public health officials due to the “spiraling rise of COVID-19 cases in the region.”
And in Ontario, some people with tickets to see the Toronto Maple Leafs and Ottawa Senators, or the NBA’s Toronto Raptors may be out of luck, as the Ontario provincial government is implementing a 50 per cent capacity limit for sporting events starting on Saturday.
No further details about Nugent-Hopkins were released by the team Friday morning.
— With files from Reid Wilkins of Global News and Steve Keating of Reuters
Comments