COVID-recovering Canucks’ return to play Friday ‘dangerous to a lot of our players’: J.T. Miller
J.T. Miller put health and safety ahead of hockey Wednesday.
Noodle on that for a while and let it roll around in your head.
The game has always been the engine that drives the old-school, “blood-and-guts,” outspoken Vancouver Canucks forward. He isn’t afraid of anything or anybody. But with what awaits the National Hockey League club on extreme emotional and physical levels in a return to play Friday at Rogers Arena, following a massive coronavirus outbreak that affected 25 people in the organization, he is beyond worried.
Miller could point fingers at the league for a competitive imbalance. Being shut down March 31 and not playing in 22 days eats at the body and mind. And with teammates Nate Schmidt, Jake Virtanen, Nils Hoglander, Loui Eriksson, Jalen Chatfield, Alex Edler, Jayce Hawryluk and Zack MacEwen remaining on the protocol list, health concerns of those who could experience long-haulers’ affects of COVID-19 trumps everything.
“I hope people don’t take this the wrong way because I’m a very competitive guy and I really want to win — there’s nothing better,” Miller said during a passionate Zoom availability. “But at the same time, this has nothing to do with hockey for our team. It’s about health and safety of our players and their families.
“It’s not about us making the playoffs at this point. This has been an extreme circumstance and to think of playoffs when guys are still recovering from this and expected to be ready to play is frustrating. I want to make sure everybody’s priorities are in the right place.
“This has nothing to do with me not wanting to play there (playoffs) or not believing in our team. It’s a very extreme scenario and dangerous to a lot of our players.”
Miller had a coronavirus scare during training camp as a high-risk, close contact of infected former teammate Jordie Benn. Now, he can question the optics of putting revenue-sharing greed ahead of health. One team practice, a game-day skate and the Edmonton Oilers on Friday and Toronto Maple Leafs on Saturday?
A schedule of 19 games in 31 days — including six back-to-backs and five games in the first seven days to restart the 56-game slog — is enough to put anybody over the edge. Should the Canucks even be playing? That was put to Miller by this reporter.
“That’s a hard question,” he said. “I don’t want to be caught agreeing with you and ‘should’ is a weird word because there are so many moving parts. I don’t know. And it’s unfortunate even to be in this scenario, but it is our job. But at the same time, one practice is not nearly enough to perform and, to be brutally honest, we’re going to need more time than this to play hockey — even the guys who didn’t get it (the virus) aren’t ready to play.
“It’s a decision made and that’s all I can really say. Seems like a very high hurdle to jump over.”
As for finishing the regular-season schedule, the simple question is: Why?
Why are the Canucks, who are out of the North Division playoff contention, risking further injury by playing the last-place Ottawa Senators on four occasions from April 22-28? They also have four games left against the Calgary Flames, including a back-to-back to end the regular season. Why suit up for the final pair? The Flames are also a long shot to catch the Montreal Canadiens for fourth place.
Why not drop those meaningless matchups and use winning percentage to slot teams for the draft lottery?
It’s hard for Miller to wrap his head around it all.
“I don’t know — I haven’t really thought of hockey much,” he said. “It’s kind of crazy. I know everybody has a job to do, but to expecting pretty much our entire team to be ready is a little bit hard to comprehend.
“I’ve skated a couple of times and my lungs are screaming and I’m definitely not in game shape at all from siting around and not doing much. I don’t really feel ready at all, to be quite honest. I’m trying to get my hockey senses back.
This is kind of the card we’ve been dealt and we’ve got to deal with it.”
Playing is one thing. Trying to get the best of Oilers Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, followed by the Leafs’ Auston Matthews, seems ridiculous. McDavid and Draisaitl are first and second in NHL scoring with 69 and 61 points, respectively. And Matthews has a league-leading 32 goals.
“We’re playing two of the best players in the world and one of the best teams in the league,” said Miller. “I never thought I’d be in this scenario in my career. It’s obviously not ideal. That’s all I worry about and it’s kind of frustrating.
“We try to talk about the No. 1 priority of healthy and safety and it’s almost impossible to achieve that with what they’ve asked us to do. This hasn’t been easy for anybody and it’s going to be challenging and it’s not very safe, if you’re asking me. And I’m sure there are other people who would agree with that.”
NEXT GAME
Friday
Edmonton Oilers vs. Vancouver Canucks
6 p.m.,
Rogers Arena
, TV: Sportsnet Pacific, Radio: Sportsnet 650 AM
“I don’t know what it’s going to take to avoid injury and stay healthy. I don’t know what the right answer is. I plan on playing and playing a tough game.”
As for the league and the NHL Players’ Association, the retort to the playing question is simple:
Why not? The league can cite other earlier outbreaks, but they came before virus variants took hold.
Ten weeks ago, the New Jersey Devils had 17 players on the league’s protocol list and the team shut down for two weeks. And the Dallas Stars had 17 players test positive during training camp and their first three games of the 2020-21 regular season were postponed. But the Devils and Stars play on.
NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly recently told Postmedia there’s obvious concern about the outbreak, but not more than other outbreaks experienced by other teams earlier this season.
“We’ve had other teams with a very high incidence of positives related to a single collection of events. Does the variant aspect make it different? To some extent, yes, but only because we haven’t had to deal with it yet. But that doesn’t make it ‘worse,’ per se — just different,” he said in an email.
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The Canucks had their league-mandated break from March 25-30, right when the variant was running rampant. And during the week of March 21, a total of 32.9 per cent of the isolates in B.C. were variants. The previous week it was 25.5 and the week before 16.3.
And a week before the Canucks were shut down, Schmidt called the virus “a little bit of a ghost — you don’t know where and when you could get it.”
Miller has dodged the positive-test bullet, but that doesn’t make all this any easier.
“I’ve definitely felt guilty here and there,” he said. “How can we all stay healthy through this and make sure everybody’s families are doing OK? This hasn’t been easy for me either, I’m coming up on 50 days of quarantine this year. It’s been a rough go and thinking of teammates every day.
“The No.1 priority is my family and my family at the rink.”
bkuzma@postmedia.com
twitter.com/benkuzma
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