NHL announces a blackout on team injury reports.

The National Hockey League has just made a controversial ruling and thus far the reaction to the news has been overwhelmingly negative. 

First, according to what is now an official announcement from the NHL's Department of Public Relations, the league has effectively announced something akin to a gag order on injury reports. The statement effectively lays out the reasons for which the league will now be handling all injury updates during both Phase 3 and Phase 4 and preventing teams from reporting on injuries to their own players. This will certainly cause a great deal of confusion for fans during the playoffs and would seem to serve no real purpose given that it will be relatively easy to guess who has been injured based on who is missing on the ice. 

Habs insider Renaud Lavoie of TVA Sports called the announcement the sign of a "new world" and I don't think he meant that in a very positive way. 

The news first began to trickle out earlier on Monday when during a press conference with NHL commissioner Gary Bettman hinted at the fact that this news would be forthcoming, but to see it laid out in an official statement by NHL public relations makes it official. Here is that statement, unedited and in full:

Given the unique circumstances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, effective with the start of Phase 3 (Monday, July 13) and, including the entirety of the Phase 4 Return to Play, the NHL and the NHL Players' Association have mutually agreed that Clubs are not permitted to disclose Player injury and/or illness information. This policy was adopted out of respect for an individual Player's right to medical privacy. The League will continue to announce, on a regular basis through Phase 3 and Phase 4, positive Players test results for COVID-19 while not release individual Player or Team identities.

So effectively the league is going to hide, or at least attempt to hide, both the identity of injured of effective players and the identity of their respective teams as well. Again this appears to be both an impossible and unnecessary task on the part of the league and no doubt this has played a role in the negative reaction to the news.