TSN: Darren Dreger on TSN 1050 when asked if there could be some change to the 14-day quarantine players have to go through if traded from an American team to a Canadian team.
** NHLrumors.com transcription
“Ya Andy, I would say there is a good chance that changes. This has been a work in progress. The seven Canadian teams, with support of their provincial health authorities, submitted proposals to the Federal government weeks ago. Maybe even a couple of months ago. And we’re waiting, waiting, waiting, and the response they got from the Federal government, finally, as of a couple of weeks ago, wasn’t very positive.
So I don’t know if it was that point that the National Hockey League engaged, or if the NHL had been working in concert with the provinces trying to get some form of an amendment or a reduction to the 14-day quarantine. But according to Frank Seravalli, what he reported on Insider Trading, and I just piggybacked on in the Leaf game , there is a level of optimism that, that 14-day quarantine period is going to be reduced. Sooner better than later obviously with the trade deadline looming.
I guess just to play devil’s advocate here, and look for our business, selfishly, very selfishly, I hope that there is a reduction in the 14-day quarantine cause we want to speculate and talk about trades and have a very busy trade deadline on April 12th. But I worry about the backlash from society.
We are all living in all kinds of restrictions, and the NHL is no different, but for the non-NHL fans or the health authorities out there, I’m not talking about the decision-makers here, I’m talking about the frontline people and everyone invested in this. Is that going to be a good look for the NHL to have what has been a rightly restrictive process reduced just to allow more flexibility with these NHL teams to do what they want to do on the business side?