Canucks sign new defenseman after Tyler Myers is added to Covid list.

Covid has been a disrupting influence in all of our lives for longer than most of us care to remember, and now the National Hockey League is learning the hard way that they are no exception to that rule.

Over the last several days the league has announced a number of shutdowns across the NHL due to a drastic number of positive tests among NHL players, players that include Vancouver Canucks defenseman Tyler Myers. On Saturday the Canucks announced that Myers had been added to the league's Covid protocol list, effectively taking the defenseman out of action for the next little while.

It would appear that the situation has left the Canucks a little shorthanded and as a result they have gone out and signed a free agent defenseman to add to their roster. Canucks insider Rick Dhaliwal was the first to break the news, revealing that the Canucks had added 27 year old defenseman Ashton Sautner by signing him to a new deal and immediately calling him up to the main roster.

Sautner was currently playing for the Abbotsford Canucks of the American Hockey League and as a result is a familiar face in the Canucks organization, nonetheless this is likely a less than ideal scenario for the team and one that may have been avoided altogether given today's news.

Seemingly just minutes after the news regarding the signing of Sautner, the league announced that the Canucks would be shutdown for at least the next few games. NHL insider Elliotte Friedman reported that the Canucks would miss today's game against the Toronto Maple Leafs and tomorrow's game against the Arizona Coyotes, a rather unfortunate circumstance for the Canucks and especially for newly appointed head coach Bruce Boudreau.

As I reported earlier today, Boudreau was looking at a very real chance to make NHL history. His 6 consecutive wins to start his tenure with the Canucks put him 1 win away from tying the league record of 7 straight wins, and a win over the Maple Leafs would have set up a meeting against the lowly Arizona Coyotes where he could have potentially claimed the record for himself with 8 straight wins.

There is now a great deal of uncertainty surrounding when the Canucks will play next, very unfortunate timing for a team that has had a drastic turn around under a new head coach.