Coburn to waivers
TSN: The Ottawa Senators have put defenseman Braydon Coburn on waivers. Coburn carries a $1.7 million salary cap hit and is in the last year of his two-year deal.
Shawn Simposon: “Coburn waived, and I’m thinking Brannstrom is coming in at some point. Media and fan talk brought White back in, and will lead to Brannstrom. How did the Sens waste a single minute of development time playing Anisimov or Coburn?”
NHL’s Procotol Related Absence list
Renaud Lavoie: NHL’s Procotol Related Absence list as of Feb. 3rd.
Buffalo Sabres – Taylor Hall, Brandon Montour, Tobias Rieder, and Rasmus Ristolainen
Chicago Blackhawks – Adam Boqvist, Ryan Carpenter, and Lucas Wallmark
Colorado Avalanche – Tyson Jost
Dallas Stars – Andrej Sekera
Detroit Red Wings – Filip Zadina
Los Angeles Kings – Andreas Athanasiou and Blake Lizotte
Minnesota Wild – Nick Bjugstad, Nick Bonino, Joel Eriksson Ek, Marcus Foligno, Marcus Johansson and Jared Spurgeon
New Jersey Devils – Nate Bastian, Jesper Bratt, Connor Carrick, Aaron Dell, Nikita Gusev, Jack Hughes, Andreas Johnsson, Janne Kuokkanen, Michael McLeod, Kyle Palmieri, Damon Severson, Yegor Sharangovich, Ty Smith, Matt Tennyson, Sami Vatanen, Pavel Zacha and Travis Zajac.
Pittsburgh Penguins – John Marino
Vegas Golden Knights – Alex Pietrangelo
Washington Capitals – Evgeny Kuznetsov and Ilya Samsonov
Winnipeg Jets – Pierre-Luc Dubois
Chris Johnston: There have been about 90 players who have been on the NHL’s Protocol list at some point during the season.
Wild games postponed
NHL.com: The NHL has postponed the next four Minnesota Wild games. Their next game is scheduled for February 11th against the St. Louis Blues. Their training facilities are closed.
Five Wild players were put on the NHL’s COVID Protocol Absence List – Jared Spurgeon, Nick Bjugstad, Nick Bonino, Joel Eriksson Ek and Marcus Johansson. Marcus Foligno was already on the list.
Michael Russo: Sources say that the players who tested positive were to take a medijet back to Minnesota while the remainder of the team quarantine in a Denver hotel.
Are postponed game an issue yet?
TSN: Darren Dreger on the growing number of postponed games, but for now they are manageable.
“The postponements are developing into an issue. You’re more than likely going to see scenarios of five games in seven nights. The clubs aren’t going to like that, and the NHL doesn’t want to do it because of the fatigue factor but the reality is if things get worse, the NHL isn’t going to have a choice other than to condense the season and use up that buffer week at the end of the year. If it doesn’t get worse, then, the NHL is confident that it can get the 56 games played in the allotted amount of time.”