Colorado Avalanche games for the next week postponed due to COVID protocol

The Colorado Avalanche become the latest addition to the NHL’s COVID protocol list, and will have their next week of games postponed until a later date.

In what has become a worrying trend for the NHL as of late, the Colorado Avalanche will have their games for the next week postponed to a later date due to an abundance of players entering COVID-19 protocol.

Over the next week, Colorado had four games on the schedule: a back-to-back against the St. Louis Blues over the weekend, and two games against the Arizona Coyotes. All games are postponed to a later date, and the league is in the process of reviewing and revising the Avalanche regular season schedule. The NHL says that “it is expected that a decision on next week’s games will be made in the coming days.” The earliest the Avalanche could be back in action will Feb. 14 against the Vegas Golden Knights.

Avalanche out of commission for the next week

As of Thursday, the only Avalanche players announced to be on the COVID protocol list were Tyson Jost and captain Gabe Landeskog. We can only assume in the last few hours that enough positive tests or close contacts were identified to postpone the upcoming games.

If there is any silver living at all to take away from this from an Avalanche perspective, the team has been dealing with numerous injuries to several key players such as Nathan MacKinnon and Devon Toews, and this pause will give them time to get healthy without missing games.

The news of the Avalanche’s postponement comes about 24 hours after the Minnesota Wild, who the Avalanche defeated 2-1 on Tuesday, had their games postponed due to COVID protocol. It’s not much a stretch to assume this situation with the Avalanche stems from contact with the Minnesota Wild players.

The Avalanche and Wild are far from the only teams so far this season that have had to shut down due to COVID-19. The Dallas Stars and Carolina Hurricanes have previously suffered COVID postponements, while the New Jersey Devils, Buffalo Sabres and Vegas Golden Knights are still out of action. A whopping total of 26 games have been postponed so far this season, and by all indication there will be plenty more to come if this doesn’t slow down.

The last week has been brutal for the NHL when it comes to dealing with COVID, and with five teams now currently out of action, the question might need to be asked about how much more the league can take? If teams continue to be knocked out of action and have games postponed, could a pause be inevitable? Hopefully we’ll never get to that point and the NHL can resume again with little interruption, because a pause, even if just for a week or two, would be disastrous. But hey, at least they removed the glass behind the benches for better air flow right?