Podkolzin wasn’t one of the positive cases and was in the SKA St. Petersburg line-up for their game on Wednesday.
COVID-19 is rife in Russia’s top hockey league, and the Canucks’ top prospect Vasili Podkolzin is at significant risk.
While the NHL is carefully executing the 2019-20 Stanley Cup final in a quarantine bubble in Edmonton, the KHL is already well into the 2020-21 regular season. Faced with a global pandemic, the KHL felt ready to have a full season of travel between countries and fans in the arenas.
The KHL continued its plans despite 116 KHL players testing positive for COVID-19 in the regular season.
The KHL has already encountered significant problems as several teams have reported positive COVID-19 cases. For example, the only Latvian team in the league, Dinamo Riga, couldn’t finish their first road trip through Russia when one of their opponents, Barys Astana, reported 12 cases of COVID-19, postponing the game. When they returned to Latvia, Riga reported five positive cases of its own, with government officials enforcing quarantine and demanding that more games be postponed.
Earlier this week, Lokomotive Yaroslavl lost a game to Kunlun Red Star when they just didn’t show up. Lokomotiv hasn’t confirmed how many positive cases they had, but the entire team has been quarantined.
In most cases, KHL teams with positive COVID-19 cases will not be quarantined and instead will simply replace their sick players with players from their junior teams. This is the case for Vasili Podkolzin’s team, SKA St. Petersburg.
According to reports, “more than half” the SKA list was positive for COVID-19, as were the coaching staff ahead of the Sibir game on Wednesday. As a result, SKA iced the youngest lineup in KHL history when 10 players made their KHL debut.
Podkolzin wasn’t one of the positive cases and was one of six teenagers on the SKA lineup.
Roman Rotenberg, SKA’s billionaire, stepped behind the bench as head coach.
It is unbelievable that under these circumstances the game even went as planned. The league has been criticized for forcing matches with junior players and for choosing to bring a loss to Finland-based Jokerit Helsinki when they refused to travel to Minsk, Belarus amid political turmoil.
Additionally, the KHL’s decision to have fans in arenas without enforcing strict social distancing or masks seems extremely daring.
Here are a few clips of the crowd at today’s KHL game.
This is an almost complete arena while half of the team contracted the Covid-19 virus.
What the hell is the KHL doing? This is a scary sight … pic.twitter.com/zxkI0qNweh
– he Faber ???????????? (@ ChrisFaber39) 23 September 2020
For Canucks fans, the KHL’s apparent disregard for the health of their players is a major concern. As the team’s top perspective, Podkolzin is an important part of the Canucks future. Closing COVID-19 could have unforeseen consequences as scientists are still unsure of the long-term effects of the virus.
In the meantime, the NHL should pay close attention to the problems the KHL has with its regular season as it makes plans for its own 2020-21 season. You just can’t face the dangers of COVID-19 as much as the KHL.
.
