Friday’s Oilers and Canucks game in Vancouver has been postponed
By Cam Lewis
3 years agoThe Edmonton Oilers will not play the Vancouver Canucks on Friday.
The team will not be flying to Vancouver on Thursday and it’s expected that the league will soon announce that Friday’s game has been postponed.
Given yesterday’s fallout, this comes as no surprise. J.T. Miller said bluntly on Wednesday that he and his teammates didn’t feel ready to play Friday…
“I don’t really feel ready at all, to be totally honest,” Miller told reporters Wednesday. “It’s dangerous to a lot of our players. To be brutally honest, we’re going to need more time to come back from this to play hockey. Even for the guys who didn’t get (the coronavirus), we’re not ready to play.”It’s frustrating, we try to talk about our number one priority is our players health and their families safety and it’s impossible to achieve that with what we’re being asked to do.”
We don’t know too many specific details about the Canucks and their players and staff, but it’s been reported that Quinn Hughes needed IV treatment and Brandon Sutter reportedly had what was described as “dreadful” symptoms. The COVID-19 breakout resulted in 21 confirmed cases on the Canucks, and that isn’t counting staff or family members that were affected.
The Canucks, who haven’t played or practiced since March 24, were scheduled to play 19 games in 31 days, including six back-to-backs. Thursday would have been their first practice and they don’t currently have a full, 23-man roster.
This is the right decision. Kudos to J.T. Miller for standing up for his team in this situation. To put the Canucks through a gauntlet of games after what they’ve been through this month would be asinine and would contradict anything the league has said about player safety in the past year.
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