Sources: NHL, NHLPA agree to pause season through Christmas holiday

With COVID-19 wreaking havoc on rosters, multiple sources told Daily Faceoff that the NHL and NHL Players’ Association agreed on Monday night to suspend all operations for a four-day period through the Christmas holiday.

Tuesday’s two scheduled games – Washington at Philadelphia and Tampa Bay at Vegas – will be played as planned, pending test results.

The temporary pause will begin on Dec. 22 and continue through Christmas Day on Dec. 25.

All 32 NHL team facilities will be closed for training for those four days. Players may not be asked to practice or test for Covid-19 on those days, according to sources familiar with the agreement.

Players must report back to their clubs on Dec. 26 for testing, practice or team travel, with practices to begin no earlier than 2:00 p.m. local time on that day.

The league traditionally pauses for three days for Christmas (Dec. 24-26). This agreement hastens the break both in the hope that the additional time will slow the spread of coronavirus in locker rooms, but also to create a uniform competitive balance for teams.

As of Monday morning, 10 of the NHL’s 32 teams had closed facilities through Dec. 26 as a result of Covid-19 outbreaks. By Monday night, only 12 of the 32 had games scheduled before Christmas, with some teams wanting to head home early for the holidays, hoping to negotiate that players might be willing to return early to work after Christmas practice. It created a competitive imbalance.

As a result, the NHL and NHLPA agreed to postpone five addition games scheduled to be played on Dec. 23. That brings the total to 49 games postponed this season, including 44 in the last week alone.

Currently, the NHL has 118 players reported in active COVID-19 protocol, accounting for 16 percent of rosters – according to data tracked by Daily Faceoff. The actual number may be even higher, as some teams like the Colorado Avalanche, have indicated they have additional players who have tested positive but have not revealed how many.

At COVID-19’s peak in last season’s 56-game shortened season with an unvaccinated player pool, the highest one-day total number of players in the protocol was 55. Monday’s number more than doubled that – and all but one of the league’s players this season is considered ‘fully vaccinated.’

Five NHL head coaches were also active in the Covid-19 protocol, along with countless support staff. Only nine of the league’s 32 teams did not have any players in the protocol, meaning 23 teams had at least one player in protocol.

In addition to conversations on the schedule, Daily Faceoff has learned that the NHL and NHLPA are in agreement that NHL players will not participate in the Beijing 2022 Winter Games in China. A formal announcement is expected to be made in the coming days, upon the two sides officially notifying the International Olympic Committee of their intention.

It has become apparent to players, even among those steadfast in their desire to play for a gold medal no matter the potential quarantine repercussions, that Covid-19 has caused a significant material disruption to the NHL season that made the Olympics a non-starter from the league’s perspective.

Now, it turns out, the players’ best hopes of participating in the Olympics will be the actual Winter Games themselves being pushed back to 2023 – which seems to be a growing possibility in light of the omicron variant spreading like wildfire with a month to go until the flame is lit in Beijing.