Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on ice hockey
[5][6] Belarus was pulled as a co-host of the 2021 men's world championship due to political instability and COVID-19 concerns, and the event was hosted solely by Latvia.
[12][13] After multiple games were declared a forfeit due to positive tests, the IIHF cancelled the 2022 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships on 29 December 2021.
[14] As a result of the German government's ban on large events, the Deutsche Eishockey Liga announced on 10 March that it would cancel the remainder of its season, marking the first time in the league's history a champion would not be crowned.
The top four teams at the time of the cancellation — EHC Red Bull München, Adler Mannheim, Straubing Tigers, and Eisbaren Berlin — would advance to the Champions Hockey League.
[16] In early March 2020, the National Hockey League suspended media access to the locker rooms, saying that only official personnel would be allowed in after the games to limit person-to-person contact.
[27]On 26 May, the NHL and the National Hockey League Players' Association agreed on a basic framework to stage the Stanley Cup playoffs in a bio-secure bubble.
[29] On 10 July, the NHL announced that the games for the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs would be hosted in two hub cities, Edmonton, and Toronto.
Following the four week period, individual teams and their medical staff could decide to move to an every-other-day testing schedule if they deemed it was safe to do so.
[48] The NHL scheduled two outdoor games at the Edgewood Tahoe Resort in Stateline, Nevada, which were intended as television showcases with no spectators, to supplant the scrapped special events.
[49] In addition, the annual Kraft Hockeyville USA preseason game was postponed by one year; it was eventually rescheduled for 3 October 2021, to be played in El Paso, Texas.
However, the Maritimes division was disrupted by new health orders and travel restrictions which prevented interprovincial games, and their regular season was halted in mid-April—with all Nova Scotia-based teams becoming ineligible to compete in the playoffs, and the first round consisting of a nine-game round robin between the three New Brunswick-based teams to determine who would play the Charlottetown Islanders for the Maritimes division championship.
They would join three Quebec-based teams for the President's Cup semifinals, with all games from then on being played at Videotron Centre in Quebec City.
[57][58][59][60][61] The WHL played a shortened season between divisional opponents (with three divisions aligned to consist exclusively of Alberta, British Columbia, and U.S.-based teams respectively), used hub cities for teams based in British Columbia and the East division (Manitoba and Saskatchewan), and cancelled its playoffs due to interprovincial travel restrictions.
[68][69][70] The league announced COVID-19 protocols with a focus on vaccination in September 2021, allowing teams to suspend players without pay if they are "unable to participate in club activities" due to a COVID-19 infection or inability to travel resulting from not being fully-vaccinated (outside of religious and medical exemptions), and additional quarantine requirements and restrictions for non-vaccinated players.
[72] On 18 October 2021, San Jose Sharks player Evander Kane was suspended for 21 games after it was found that he had submitted a forged vaccine record to the league.
[73] By early-November, outbreaks had begun to impact teams, and result in players being deactivated via placement on the NHL's "COVID-19 protocol list".
[41][77][78] The NHL postponed a number of games or moved them to U.S. cities, specifically citing the implementations of capacity restrictions in multiple Canadian provinces.
[79][80][81] On 22 December, the NHL and NHLPA also announced that they would withdraw from participation in the 2022 Winter Olympics, citing COVID-19 concerns and the need to use the reserved break in the schedule to make up postponed games.
