With COVID spiking, Wild's concerns include safety, NHL participation in Olympics

Nico Sturm had just pulled a piece of salmon out of the oven Tuesday for his pregame meal when messages started flooding the Wild's group chat.

The team's game that night against the Hurricanes at Xcel Energy Center was called off, postponed after four Carolina players tested positive for COVID-19.

"I guess these days you've kind of got to be ready for those kind of things to happen," Sturm said. "Who knows? It's probably going to happen again at some point. Hopefully not, but that's unfortunately the world we live in."

All week the NHL has been dealing with the virus, with the largest outbreak in Calgary, where the Flames have 18 players on their COVID list in addition to three coaches and nine staff members.

Other teams that sidelined at least one player on Thursday were Colorado, Arizona, New Jersey, Florida, Boston, Edmonton, Los Angeles and Nashville. The entire league is vaccinated except for one player, Detroit's Tyler Bertuzzi.

Like the Wild, which hosted Buffalo, Carolina was also back in action on Thursday but iced only 16 skaters instead of the normal 18 because of COVID-19 and salary cap restraints.

"We just hope we can all stay safe, and we can go about our business in the right direction," Wild coach Dean Evason said. "But I think everybody's trying to do the right things. I know certainly we are. It is alarming that it's going again, but we'll just try to stay as safe as we can."

While there were reports of the NHL implementing stricter protocols like daily testing and a mask requirement, rules that were in place last season during division-only play, the Wild said Thursday morning the team hadn't heard of a policy change.

"Obviously, there's talk about it but nothing for sure yet," said captain Jared Spurgeon, who mentioned as of now players are testing every three days. "I think they're going over everything possible, so we'll wait to hear what they have to say."

This spike in cases has put into question NHL participation in the upcoming Winter Olympics, especially with uncertainty surrounding the length of a quarantine if a player tests positive in China.

Sturm, who could represent Germany, isn't hopeful about NHLers suiting up for the Games. The league has until Jan. 10 to pull out of the Olympics without facing a financial penalty.

"Just with how things are going, I just don't see how," Sturm said. "I would obviously love to go, but I've got to be realistic about it, too. I'm not going to get my hopes up too high, to be honest. I'm just going to go week by week and see what happens. I think most of the guys are thinking the same way. They'd love to go, but it just seems so complicated at the moment that it's hard to see that it's going to happen.

"I just don't see with games being canceled, and we're probably going to have to make it up and it's probably going to get worse the next week or two. I don't see schedule-wise how it's going to fit in."

Wild players are also mindful of the Winter Classic on Jan. 1 at Target Field against the Blues.

"The Winter Classic is probably a once-in-a-career thing that nobody is going to want to miss," Sturm said. "I think the last couple of days I've started to try to be a little more careful at the grocery store and stuff like that just because of that. Nobody is going to want to miss that."