Ice Breakers: NHL Debating Covid-19 Testing Requirements For Asymptomatic Players

What do Nathan MacKinnon, Mark Scheifele and Jeff Carter have in common?

Aside from being all-world centers, all three are among a handful of vaccinated NHL players who have missed games in the first two weeks of the season for a positive COVID-19 test despite being asymptomatic.

Their absences have wreaked havoc on their teams – from a competitive perspective, with their rosters and salary caps, in addition to a health and lifestyle perspective, triggering additional protocols and restrictions.

That has led to frustration from players and front offices alike.

Change could be on the horizon.

Daily Faceoff has learned the NHL and its team of medical experts are currently debating the merits of testing asymptomatic players.

In other words, it’s possible that the NHL modifies the protocol only to test players and team personnel for COVID-19 who present symptoms.

The parties involved, including the NHL Players’ Association, will be jointly reviewing the testing requirements as of Nov. 1. It’s difficult to predict the likelihood of a protocol change for asymptomatic testing because we’re told even the experts have a split opinion.

The NBA does not test vaccinated players, with rare exceptions, according to its published protocol. The NFL tests all players once per week, whereas NHL players could be tested three times in that same span. (MLB’s protocol was written back in February, making it much less applicable here.)

A protocol modification is only possible largely because since it was written in August, the NHL now has a more complete picture of the vaccination status of the league. All but four players league-wide (99.5 percent) have been fully vaccinated; every team staff member or personnel, including media, who comes into regular contact with players is also fully vaccinated.

The idea behind potentially removing the testing requirement for asymptomatic individuals is in one part because their risk of serious illness is significant lowered by virtue of the vaccine, but also the logistics involved in testing. It often takes upwards of 16-24 hours for teams to receive lab-based PCR test results.

The current NHL COVID-19 protocol calls for vaccinated individuals to be tested at least once every 72 hours. That means an asymptomatic person may already have had the ability to spread the virus for a couple days to those around him before even showing up as a positive test.

The other side of the argument, with perspective on the overall health and safety of players, is that science still might not know enough about long-term health effects even for asymptomatic players. Some studies have indicated lung and/or heart damage can occur in the absence of symptoms. The NHL must also keep in mind the health and safety of player and staff family members, as well.

Of course, all players who have tested positive this season have not been asymptomatic. A number of vaccinated players, including Winnipeg’s Blake Wheeler, Pittsburgh’s Zach Aston-Reese and Seattle’s Calle Jarnkrok, have also tested positive this season and experienced symptoms. They’ve all been required to quarantine for 10 days.

Asymptomatic players can test out of the protocol with back-to-back negative tests 24 hours apart. Some of them would have preferred to not know the results to begin with, given their lack of symptoms.

Winnipeg Jets forward Paul Stastny voiced his opinion on testing asymptomatic players on Thursday, one of the few players who has spoken publicly about a widely-shared opinion in hockey locker rooms.

“Yeah, I mean if you’re going to test all the time you’re just looking for someone to get it,” Stastny told reporters. “So it’s just if guys don’t have any symptoms, if everyone is vaccinated in the NHL, and the staff and the players, I understand you want to be safe. But if no one’s feeling symptoms, and you’re not going to be tested, you shouldn’t … I don’t think you should be testing all the time. I think if guys were told last summer, potentially, if everyone is vaccinated, then if you have symptoms then you would test, which is understandable, I get that.

“Just because it’s something new and something the whole world’s still dealing with, I think it’s always gonna be around. But eventually we’re gonna have to learn to live with it and learn to take care of ourselves, whether it’s how we train or how we recover; how we eat or how we exercise and stuff like that. There’s always going to be those cases that just, you know, things happen that are unexpected. But you can say that about a lot of other things. So, it’d be nice if it just went away and we wouldn’t have to deal with it. But it’s going be here for … it looks like it’s gonna be there forever and I think we’re going to have to learn to move on and find ways to deal with it and then try to get as healthy as we can.”