Washington Capitals game vs. Flyers gets postponed

Today was supposed to be a Washington Capitals gameday as they were going to debut the reverse retro sweaters but sadly we’ll have to wait another time to see those beauties on the ice. The National Hockey League announced on Tuesday morning that tonight’s Capitals game against the Philadelphia Flyers has been postponed.

The decision was made by the league after a second flyers player entered the NHL’s COVID protocol. The Flyers did massive testing before Sunday’s game against the Capitals and initially had one player test positive.

Defeseman Travis Sanheim was the first player to enter protocol as he tested positive before Sunday’s game. All the rest of the tests came back negative and the NHL decided to play the game. The Flyers went on to win 7-4.

Another Flyers player entered the NHL’s COVID-19 protocol list after a positive test late last night, reported by Darren Dreger of TSN. It is unclear when the game will be rescheduled.

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Being added to the COVID-19 protocol list doesn’t necessarily mean that the player tested positive. Players can end up on the list for travel quarantines or contact tracing or if they are symptomatic. Almost 100 players have been on the list since hockey returned but fewer than half had positive cases according to commissioner Gary Bettman.

There are now three Caps games that are postponed this week. The Buffalo Sabres are dealing with the coronavirus and as a result both of their games against the Caps scheduled for Thursday and Saturday have been postponed. The Sabres shutdown last week but returned to practice on Tuesday.

There’s three teams currently shutdown due to novel coronavirus issues: the New Jersey Devils, the Minnesota Wild, and the Colorado Avalanche. Buffalo and New Jersey have not played since the two teams faced each other on Jan. 31. The Devils had three more postponements on Monday.

The Caps are next scheduled to play on Valentine’s Day in Pittsburgh against the Penguins. The Caps had their own coronavirus issues earlier this season but just got all four players back. Alex Ovechkin and Dmitry Orlov returned to game action while Ilya Samsonov and Evgeny Kuznetsov practiced on Monday.

Samsonov and Kuznetsov both came off the list on Monday after spending two weeks in quarantine. There’s only one Caps player on the COVID-19 list and that’s Jakub Vrana after he got added there on Saturday.

Why the NHL decided to proceed for the Caps to play when they were missing four players is beyond me.