Seattle Kraken remain hopeful to play this week despite mounting COVID-19 cases in NHL

Kraken Community Iceplex was eerily quiet Sunday.

At the center of an unusual winter wonderland right outside their doors, the Kraken practiced with as full of a group as they could muster amid more positive COVID-19 tests and injuries and travel woes.

With snowy roads outside and inside an empty rink, 15 skaters and both goalies practiced with some notable absences as the Kraken were on the ice for the first time since their loss Dec. 18 to the Oilers at Climate Pledge Arena. They had two games last week and three players added into COVID protocol.

Those three – Adam Larsson, Jamie Oleksiak and Carson Soucy – were joined Sunday by Vince Dunn and Ryan Donato, who were the two new Kraken positives, and the roster is down four defensemen. They’ll have to make some sort of a roster move. Oleksiak could be eligible to return Wednesday.

The Kraken will have to manage the roster a bit before they get into game play again.

“I don’t want to get into any speculation,” Kraken coach Dave Hakstol said after practice Sunday. “We haven’t made any of those moves or decisions yet. Over the next 24 hours, those are the decisions that will be made.”

For someone like Oleksak returning, or Larsson and Soucy, who entered protocol within 24 hours of each other, there’s more at play than just availability.

“You have the dates they’re scheduled in terms of going into protocol, when the 10 days are up,” Hakstol said. “There’s more to it than that; there’s the health of the player at the end of that time. All those are things you simply can’t evaluate until you get to that point in time.”

Jordan Eberle, Colin Blackwell and Will Borgen were absent due to trouble traveling back to Seattle after the holidays, so they haven’t done their return testing yet. Brandon Tanev was placed on injured reserve last week after being hurt in the Oilers game, and the team said there could be an update on his status Monday. As of last week, he was seeking a second opinion. So the Kraken are working with a short-handed group heading into three scheduled games in four days this week.

Earlier Sunday, the NHL and NHLPA worked out some CBA exemptions for COVID roster relief. The Kraken will likely use at least some of it.

For the rest of the season, whenever teams are down two goalies, they will be allowed to add an additional one. Teams will also be allowed one emergency recall of a player whose cap hit is less than $1 million if they are in danger of playing a game without two goalies, six defensemen or 12 forwards.

Until the All-Star break in the first week of February, teams will be allowed to use taxi squads again. They aren’t required for any team that doesn’t want them, but it will include up to six players for up to 20 days. Any waiver-exempt players, players on a roster as of Dec. 22 or who were on an NHL roster for at least 75% of the regular-season days or played in 16 of a team’s past 20 games through Dec. 22 are ineligible.

That would mean Max McCormick and Alex True, on the Kraken roster amid COVID absences, wouldn’t be eligible.

Those squads will be allowed to travel and practice with the NHL club. For a team like the Kraken, if they choose to use it, they could include players like Connor Carrick, Gustav Olofsson, Cale Fleury and Kole Lind.

The Kraken’s Monday game in Vancouver was already postponed. There is still no word on when teams might be able to play cross-border games again, or what schedule changes are coming. The Kraken are scheduled for three home games this week against Philadelphia (Wednesday), Calgary (Thursday) and Vancouver (Saturday).

The plan is to practice Monday and Tuesday to get back into game shape after so much time off.

“Our focus has to be right now on a couple of great days of practice,” Hakstol said. “We’ve been off for a significant amount of time; it’s a little more time than everybody is accustomed to. So these practices are important regardless of who is available and who’s not available.”