Well, via Abel to Yzerman, we’re yet again digging into Tyler Bertuzzi’s controversial decision to be one of four NHL players to not be vaccinated against COVID-19. According to the Vancouver Province’s Patrick Johnston, it’s an uncomfortable process for Bertuzzi, and a costly process for the Red Wings and the NHLPA:
The NHL’s COVID-19 protocol this season, agreed to by the players’ association, places a heavy burden on unvaccinated players.
But the vaccinated part of the team also has to deal with those burdens. Things like potential masking in dressing rooms if they aren’t able to maintain six-feet distancing from the unvaccinated player.
Social distancing measures being put in place on planes and busses. It’s surely annoying for the vaccinated players to have to deal with these extra bits.
The unvaccinated player themselves can’t leave the team hotel on the road. They have to take a PCR test every day. Costs borne by the team to deal with the unvaccinated player are counted 50 per cent against the players’ share of revenues.
The rules were designed to make things uncomfortable for unvaccinated players … but somehow four guys are still shrugging their shoulders and the teams are somehow going along with it.
If Tyler Bertuzzi and Mackenzie Blackwood weren’t so important to their teams, it seems likely they’d have been handled like Zac Rinaldo. Or even like Travis Hamonic.
Continued; I’m a little tired of controversy after a couple weeks’ worth of covering Bertuzzi, the Larkin suspension, and now Zadina’s “short” choice of words.
But until your sneeze stops at your nose, and your cough stops at your mouth, vaccination is a “personal decision” that affects others, and hockey players are spitting, bleeding, sweating, hydrating, working out etc. in close proximity.
Obviously, Bertuzzi’s immense popularity in the locker room, combined with his utter importance to the team, mean that he’s being well-tolerated, and the truth of the matter is of course that there are people from all belief systems who play hockey, so we all have to deal with each other…
But I come from a family of people who have immune issues, so I can’t help but feel that selfish is as selfish does. And if Bertuzzi–who is a member of the Red Wings’ family, on and off the ice, to the fan base as well as his teammates–is made uncomfortable by being swabbed every day and made to deal with extra protocols, so be it.
