NHL insider Elliotte Friedman reports that NHL teams are actively asking their players to consider getting a COVID-19 booster shot, despite being fully vaccinated.
From Friedman's most recent 32 Thoughts column for Sportsnet:
Teams are starting to ask players who received the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine to consider a booster. Before the season, the idea of a booster was a real hot-button topic. Clubs were concerned a good chunk of players would say no. I think that’s softened, but we will see where it goes. On the Olympics, I don’t see three postponed games as threatening NHL participation in Beijing. If this continues to happen, that’s when you’ve got reason to worry. A positive COVID case in China means a three-week quarantine. That would dissuade me more than making up games. The NHL long lists are 55 names per country (56 for Canada with Carey Price’s special status), but someone was saying that there are 150 names for some countries when you consider the possibilities if the NHLers don’t go.
- Elliotte Friedman, Sportsnet
Call me a conspiracy theorist, but "starting to ask players... to consider a booster" is just a hop, skip and a jump away from yet another vaccine mandate. As Friedman reports, when the players were asked to take a booster shot before the season it was seen as a "hot button issue" and I'm willing to bet that that's still the case. After all, these are some of the healthiest individuals in the greater population, why are we obsessing over their vaccination status? Again, maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about but I can't help but feel like this is going to cause a serious ripple in the NHLPA's ranks.
I'm also willing to bet that most players simply won't care and will just do what they're told. That's their prerogative of course, but again I can't help but feel like if the league does indeed posit a booster mandate that there will be more players out there than just Tyler Bertuzzi who rebuff and say, "enough is enough." Friedman has also reported that the players aren't happy having to undergo daily testing, despite showing now symptoms... now we're going to create more hoops for them to jump through? Something's got to give...
