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NHL announces COVID-19 protocols for 2022-23 season

By Max Molski

NHL announces COVID-19 protocols for 2022-23 season originally appeared on NBC Sports Washington

The NHL and NHL Players’ Association announced their COVID-19 protocols for the 2022-23 season on Wednesday.

The protocols note that both the U.S. and Canada have travel quarantine restrictions that may keep unvaccinated individuals from crossing into the other country or force them into quarantine. Per the new protocols, teams are permitted to suspend unvaccinated players who are unable to participate in team activities due to their vaccination status. In those situations, teams can also force those players to forfeit pay for each day they are absent. Otherwise, any player who tests positive will continue to be paid for as long as they are unavailable to participate in team activities.

Players cannot be denied from participating in team activities based on their vaccination status unless protocols or government/health authorities call for it. Suspensions and fines also cannot be handed to unvaccinated players who have a medical or religious exemption. 

Players who show COVID-19 symptoms must take a rapid test and quarantine while awaiting the test’s status. Those players must test daily for three days if the first test is negative.

For players who test positive, individuals who are asymptomatic can exit isolation within the first five days once they have two consecutive negative test results. For individuals who were symptomatic and in quarantine between six and nine days, they can exit isolation with one negative test result as long as it comes more than 24 hours since their last fever. Anyone who exits quarantine in fewer than 10 days must wear a face covering until it has been 10 days since the positive test.

Additionally, any player who exhibits upper respiratory infection symptoms must undergo cardiac testing following isolation. 

As part of the 2022-23 protocols, organizations must disclose any positive COVID-19 cases from a player to the media. 

Training camp, game or even season postponement is still on the table as an available option. Commissioner Gary Bettman still has the power to postpone, delay or move training camp or a portion of the NHL season if the league or NHLPA believe continuing the season “would create or exacerbate a material risk to players’ or others’ health and safety and/or jeopardize the integrity of the competition anticipated during the 2022/23 season.”

Capitals’ Anthony Mantha calls healthy scratch a ‘wake-up call’

By Matt Weyrich
Mantha calls healthy scratch a ‘wake-up call’ originally appeared on NBC Sports WashingtonARLINGTON, Va. — With the returns of Nicklas Backstrom and Tom Wilson on Sunday came a series of roster decisions for the Capitals. They had to open two roster spots, clearing salary cap space and reshuffle a lineup that had produced the NHL’s best record over the last month-plus.One of the biggest domino effects of those moves proved to be a healthy scratch of Anthony Mantha, the Capitals’ prized midseason acquisition of 2020-21 whose tenure in Washington thus far has been defined by stretches of brilliance between extended scoring droughts. It was the first time he sat out a game for Washington without an injury designation.“I think I had a good stretch, a bad stretch,” Mantha said at practice Monday. “It’s part of hockey, I don’t think I was playing terrible. Obviously, the minutes were going down, so the decision to play me [9:48] in my last game there so, you kind of knew it was coming.”Laviolette moved Mantha off the second line and placed him on the fourth-line left wing with Nic Dowd and Garnet Hathaway for Tuesday’s game against the Buffalo Sabres. He played two games in that spot but his 9:48 of ice time Friday against the Nashville Predators was the fewest minutes of any game he finished healthy with the Capitals since he was acquired.“These are obviously tough decisions,” Laviolette said Sunday. “There's 14 forwards now with [Aliaksei] Protas and [Joe] Snively not being here and 14 NHL players that have helped our team be successful. Two of those players are now available coming off of injury and it just made for tough decisions. I have no problem if either one of those guys were in the lineup today, Kubel or Mantha, but they're not. I had to make decisions, and that's where I started.”RELATED: Wilson, Backstrom get legs underneath them in Caps returnsMantha has scored nine goals with 14 assists in 42 games for the Capitals this season, the same totals he put up in 37 games last year when he missed time with a shoulder injury. He’s averaged 0.58 points per game in his two-and-a-half seasons with Washington after putting up 0.64 over his six years with the Detroit Red Wings.However, Mantha reflected on his performance in recent weeks and didn’t feel that his offense was the main contributor.“It’s easy to say now, everyone gets a lot of chances and you don’t score all of them,” Mantha said of whether a few bounces his way could’ve changed things. “So, it could’ve been different. I don’t think it’s necessarily the points and the goals he’s mad about, I think it’s more the rest of the game.”With 39 games still left on the Capitals’ schedule, it’s likely he gets a chance to reestablish himself in their lineup. Mantha could be back on the ice as soon as Washington’s next game Wednesday against the Philadelphia Flyers. In the meantime, he’s working to improve his work ethic and show his coaches that he can make a better impact.“I felt good, I mean body-wise, like you said, no injuries, I think it’s the first year in a couple of years that I played the first half of the season without getting injured,” Mantha said. “So, I was pumped for that. Like I said, it’s a slap in the face, maybe a wake-up call and work your way back.”
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