Thankfully there won’t be a lot of lasting impact on last week’s announcement that a Bruins player had tested positive for COVID-19.
The Bruins player himself has been asymptomatic throughout the process and a pair of ensuing negative tests made the possibility fairly strong that it could be a false positive result for the individual player in the first place.
Given there are only voluntary practices in small groups for the next few weeks, there isn’t much at stake right now for the Bruins in taking their time and being extra careful with the first documented case in a long return to play process.
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Still, the player won’t be able to start Phase 2 skating at Warrior Ice Arena until he tests negative again this week and will be far from the last player in any of the pro sports to test positive for COVID-19 while the world waits for a vaccine.
It all begs the question what exactly is going to happen when players test positive for COVID-19 once the games are actually being played? Will the NHL player who tests positive be required to self-quarantine for two weeks no matter what the circumstances, including a possible false positive result once the player testing is ramped up to every day?
How will this impact a playoff series if a key player tests positive once things really get going? It’s a scenario that provides a massively unpredictable variable for every sports league in their Return to Play plans.
It’s also something we’re only just getting started with while breaking down the scenarios that are still months away from happening.
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“I think it will be a mental hurdle [both for] us as coaches and for the leadership group to get the players over,” said Bruins head coach Bruce Cassidy to NBC Sports Boston on a Zoom call when asked about dealing with positive test results once games are being played. “For example, you’re playing along and you say ‘key player’. Who is the biggest player in every playoff series? The spotlight is on the goaltender.
"So let’s say anybody’s goaltender is playing really well and then all of a sudden they have a positive [test]. How is that going to affect the group? That will be the biggest hurdle that everybody is going to have to get over and get past. What will be the protocol? I assume the player would be removed, but for what length of time if the player is asymptomatic? How does it impact the rest of the guys? That will be an unknown and it will be a challenge as a coach.
That’s why once we’re up and running I do believe that the mentally toughest group is the one that’s going to prevail. There will be a need to get over those kinds of things when they occur, or don’t occur. If there’s a false positive and [a player] misses a couple of games, are you going to use that as a crutch? You want to make sure everybody is going to be healthy. That goes for the players and that goes for the coaches as well. I don’t want to bring that into my house either. Those questions need to be answered and there will be challenges. The teams that gets over those things the quickest and just plays will have the best chance to win.
Certainly there’s an argument to be made that the Bruins are the mentally toughest group in the playoff field based on their experience, and based on things that seasoned veteran players like Zdeno Chara and Patrice Bergeron have played through in the past. That could bode well for them based simply on the character makeup inside the Boston dressing room.
Clearly there are still kinks to be worked out once an organized training camp scenario is taking place and scenarios that will be addressed on the fly given how much of this is all uncharted waters since COVID-19 put everything on pause. It all goes back to the circumstances behind the first positive test for the Bruins and just how much everybody still doesn’t know even about that simple case.
“There’s still some uncertainty there. There was a positive and there were two negative [tests], so what happened? I don’t think anybody knows what happened and I certainly don’t,” said Cassidy. “But it’s a good test run for down the road because I’d imagine as you get bigger groups together it might happen again. It’s a good run-through of the protocol of what can happen and should happen.
“All of that certainly happens outside of my jurisdiction, so it’s going to be interesting to see how all of that plays out. It’s going to be interesting to see how the players react to it. It’s just not going to happen to the Bruins. It will happen throughout, I’m sure. For me it’s about A) is the player safe? And he’s asymptomatic so that is good news. Has he infected anybody around him? I don’t know the answer to that, including his own inner circle. We’ll get the answers to [all of] that down the road.”
All of it adds up to still so many hurdles that must be cleared for the NHL to be running again, and even then Stanley Cup playoff games that go off this summer will be like nothing we’ve ever seen before based on the circumstances.
Check out the full interview with Cassidy below: