Two members of the Kraken added to Covid protocol list.

The Seattle Kraken will be down a coach and a player, at least for the short term.

On Sunday night the team announced that 2 members of the team had been added to the National Hockey League's Covid protocol list, with those being veteran forward Jared McCann and assistant Paul McFarland.

As is always the case, if either man has tested positive they will require 2 consecutive negative tests before being eligible to return. In some cases players have come back the very next day and in others they have been out for a longer period of time, so it is impossible to predict how long either McCann or McFarland may be sidelined for.

The news has to be incredibly disappointing for McCann who was off to what was arguably the hottest start of his NHL career so far. Through 8 games with the Kraken this season the 25 year old forward has 3 goals and 4 assists for 7 points, a pace that if he had maintained would have seen him eclipsing his personal milestones.

In spite of a pretty good draft pedigree, he was selected in the 1st round (24th overall) of the 2014 NHL Entry Draft, McCann has bounced around the league quite a bit since entering the NHL. Although McCann is a former first round pick and has only been in the league for 7 seasons, the Kraken are already his 5th NHL team. It looked as though he had found something of a home with the Pittsburgh Penguins but, likely believing that he would be claimed by the Kraken in the expansion draft, that team traded him to the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Leafs acquired McCann but they had every intention of leaving him exposed in the expansion draft, and when they did just that the Kraken pounced at the chance to acquire the former first rounder.

McCann now appears poised to establish himself as part of the Kraken's core group of forwards, hopefully this bit of bad news won't derail the hot start he has had so far.