The Maple Leafs announced today that four further players have tested positive for COVID-19. David Kämpf, Ilya Mikheyev, Rasmus Sandin, and Petr Mrázek are all in the NHL’s COVID protocol. That’s not all, as goalie coach, Steve Briere, and another member of the medical staff have also tested positive.

This now brings the total case count up to 11 players (Tavares, Kerfoot, Spezza, Simmonds, Brodie, Campbell, Dermott, Kämpf, Mikheyev, Sandin, Mrázek), three coaches (Keefe, Carbery, Briere), and three members of the support staff having tested positive in the last five days since the 17th of December.

UPDATE (Dec 23):

And now Morgan Rielly has tested positive for COVID-19, as well as another staff member of the team. This brings the total up to 12 players and seven staff members in isolation. Lance Hornby notes that this makes it very unlikely the Leafs will make that first game back on the 27th. It’ll only just have been 10 days since Tavares and Kerfoot tested positive when that game comes up, and with new cases still showing up, the shutdown is probably going to be even longer.

The Leafs are under shutdown until after Boxing Day (Dec 26th) at least, though it’s not certain they will come off their shutdown at that time, especially after these cases have come up. The team’s next scheduled game is on December 27th in Columbus, Ohio. It seems highly unlikely the team will be making that game for three reasons:

  1. All testing negative.
  2. Able to travel between 26th and 27th.
  3. Prepared after no practices for 10 days.

Katya has a lot more on this in her article over the weekend. Things have changed, but the timelines are still impossibly narrow.

More Maple Leafs in Covid Protocol

The Toronto Marlies have 10 players under COVID protocol as of our last update on December 18th. They’re shut down until after December 28th, though some of their postponed games have already been rescheduled.