One year after COVID-19 changed the game, brighter days ahead By: Mike McIntyre Posted: 7:00 PM CST Wednesday, Mar. 10, 2021

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/03/2021 (1423 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In some ways, it feels like just yesterday. In other ways, a lifetime ago.

Regardless of your perspective — and mine changes on the regular — it has been exactly one year since the sports world was brought to its knees by COVID-19, the global pandemic which dramatically changed life as we knew it including our familiar creature comforts.

I was in Edmonton last March 11, covering what would turn out to be the final night of the 2019-20 NHL regular-season. The Jets downed the Oilers by a 4-2 score, but the action on the ice was rendered pretty much moot by the time they dropped the puck to start the second period. Even the players involved in that contest admit to losing focus once they heard what was happening during the first intermission.

An NBA player named Rudy Gobert had just tested positive for the virus, becoming the proverbial canary in the coal mine and bringing his league to a screeching halt. That quickly became all the buzz in the press box at Rogers Place — and even on the ice between whistles it turns out. We all knew it was only a matter of time before others, including the NHL, followed suit.

Hours, it turns out.

“We fly that night to Calgary and we’re going to play in Calgary (that weekend). I think that was midweek, and I’m sure that Saturday or Sunday, I’m coaching. It never crossed my mind. I didn’t know enough about it. I thought this was a two or three-day thing, they’ll give us a new plan and away we go,” Jets coach Paul Maurice recalled the other day.

Jets forward Andrew Copp had a foreboding sense as he and captain Blake Wheeler walked from their nearby downtown Edmonton hotel to the rink late that afternoon.

“During our nap March Madness had been cancelled, conference tournaments in basketball had been cancelled. And we were thinking we’re going to come out of this game and the whole world is going to have changed. And we were pretty spot-on,” Copp told me Wednesday.

“At the time I guess I didn’t think it was going to be a couple-week thing. That just didn’t make sense given what we knew about it at that point, or thought we knew about it.”

It ended up being a four-month thing, with the NHL returning in mid-summer for a unique 24-team Stanley Cup playoff tournament inside secure bubble zones set up in the hub cities of Edmonton and Toronto. The NBA found a way back as well. MLB eventually held a delayed, shortened season, and the NFL managed to get a COVID-ravaged campaign in this past fall. The NHL and NBA are now well into their 2021 campaigns, and MLB is now in spring training.

Other leagues, such as the CFL, weren’t so fortunate. No fans meant no meaningful revenues meant no chance. And plenty of minor-league and amateur sports have taken massive hits. Some may never fully recover.

Nearly all of the games that have been played are in empty stadiums and rinks, where the sight of tarped-off seats, piped-in crowd noises, Zoom press conferences and coaches on the bench wearing masks has been an everyday part of the new normal.

“Boy, what a year it’s been,” Jets defenceman Neal Pionk said Wednesday.

It’s been a delicate balance for pro sports leagues, trying to mitigate financial losses while also navigating health and safety restrictions in different provinces and states. And it hasn’t been without controversy. For every fan happy to have their favourite team back in some fashion to provide a much-needed distraction, you can find someone furious at the needless risk or what they feel is a double-standard. Especially at a time when so many jobs, and lives, have been lost around the globe.

Perspectives have changed, too. What once was seen as catastrophic — a single athlete like Gobert getting COVID-19 — would now be classified as a pretty good day. At one point last month, the NHL had more than 60 players in protocol, including major outbreaks on multiple teams at the same time. The NFL, NBA and MLB have dealt with similar flare-ups. And yet they’ve found a way to live with the virus and keep going, even if it still doesn’t look or sound or feel anything like we grew accustomed to.

Absence truly does make the heart grow fonder. I’ve lost track of how many times Jets players, or those on other teams, have made unsolicited remarks about missing the fans in the stands. It’s a genuine sentiment, not just some empty platitude meant to score PR points. A big part of what makes their job so rewarding is still missing.

“That almost kind of sets the stage for the emptiness of it all. There’s no interaction between the fans and the players, the streets are quiet, you’re not out, we’re not going out for dinner. All of the places that we normally interact with each other, we can’t. So I feel it, and I think all the players feel it,” said Maurice.

Just as life has largely been one of isolation and, at times, loneliness for us regular folks, the same can be true of multi-millionaire athletes. Especially when on lengthy road trips, like the Jets are currently experiencing. They’ll spend almost the entire month of March away from Winnipeg.

“Obviously we understand it from a public health standpoint, but mentally it’s been really challenging for everybody,” said Pionk.

We’ve all had to adjust, some much more than others. Hopefully we all come out of this with a better perspective and appreciation of what’s truly important. Whether that includes sport is purely a personal choice.

Fortunately for everyone, there is reason for optimism these days. COVID-19 numbers are trending down, especially here in Manitoba. Vaccinations are ramping up. Restrictions are slowly lifting. Economies are gradually reopening. And fans are starting to return, going from just three NHL markets when the season began two months ago to 17 that now have the green light.

Talks are even underway here in Winnipeg between government and health officials and local sports teams about what that will eventually look like on a local level.

Could a Jets playoff run this spring actually involve some form of whiteout at Bell MTS Place? Might Goldeyes supporters be able to root-root-root for the home team at Shaw Park starting in a couple months? Will folks finally be able to celebrate the Blue Bombers 2019 Grey Cup championship at the scheduled home opener in June?

What might have seemed impossible a few months ago is now at least a possibility.

“I think there is a sense of a light at the end of the tunnel,” said Pionk.

However long, or short, this past year has felt, the good news is it’s all in the rear-view mirror. On a day like today, let’s remember how far we’ve come. And look forward to much brighter days ahead.

 

mike.mcintyre@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @mikemcintyrewpg