The Vancouver Canucks season continues to pause as a COVID-19 outbreak that has affected the team has gone from bad to worse.
The team added seven players to the league’s COVID protocol list on Saturday, bringing the total number of players to 14. Sources told ESPN that two coaches were added to the list, which raised the total number of coaches in protocol to three.
Seven players and a coach were already on the roster, prompting the NHL to postpone the Canucks games until April 8, with the training facility open before April 6.
According to sources, the Canucks ’recent additions to the protocol list could keep them out of action even further. The Vancouver region has recently become an access point for the Brazilian variant P.1 of the virus.
The Canucks are the second Canadian-based team to have COVID problems. The Montreal Canadiens had four games postponed in late March, but have since returned to action. The NHL has postponed 45 games due to COVID, although the first 37 postponements were all for teams based in the United States.
For Vancouver, the problem began Tuesday when Adam Gaudette was retired from practice after a positive test result, which was confirmed positive later that night. Travis Hamonic joined Gaudette on the protocol list on Thursday. On Friday, Alex Edler, Braden Holtby, Quinn Hughes, Zack MacEwen and Antoine Roussel were also added to the list, following additional testing and contract tracking.
Gaudette’s wife, Micaela, tweeted on Thursday: “My husband is not in good shape, but I take good care of him!”
Micaela Gaudette also tweeted: “A human being gets sick with a virus that we don’t know much about and you’re all angry with him because you can’t watch a hockey game.”
Travis Boyd, Thatcher Demko, Jayce Hawryluk, Bo Horvat, Tyler Motte, Tyler Myers and Brandon Sutter were added to the list on Saturday.