Barring a setback, the Vancouver Canucks will return to game action against the Edmonton Oilers on Friday night, the team’s first game since March 24.
At the height of the outbreak, there were 21 players who had tested positive for the virus, as well as four staff members.
Over the last few days, players slowly started to be removed from the NHL’s COVID-19 protocol list as they recovered from COVID-19, and this morning there were 14 players still on it.
Today, another seven players were removed from the list, which means just seven players are still in COVID-19 protocol.
The seven players still on the list are Alex Edler, Nate Schmidt, Nils Höglander, Jake Virtanen, Zack MacEwen, Jayce Hawyluk and Jalen Chatfield.
Plenty of #Canucks players removed from the COVID list this afternoon. 7 players remaining: Jalen Chatfield; Alex Edler; Jayce Hawryluk; Nils Hoglander; Zack MacEwen; Nate Schmidt; Jake Virtanen. Schmidt, Virtanen & Hoglander were last to go on. @TSNHockey
— Farhan Lalji (@FarhanLaljiTSN) April 14, 2021
Schmidt, Höglander and Virtanen were the last three players to be added to the list at the beginning of last week and it's being reported that they won't be out of protocol in time for Friday's game.
Another player that won't be available is Loui Eriksson, who's been deemed a close contact to a positive case and will still be in protocol for a few more days.
Assuming the Canucks do resume play on Friday, it’ll be the start of an unforgiving 19 games in 30 days stretch to finish up the regular season.
