The Penguins realize coronavirus-related disruptions are likely

On Friday, the NHL began to face the reality the NFL, MLB and countless NCAA teams have dealt with the past nine months.

Trying to play during a pandemic won’t go smoothly.

The Dallas Stars and Columbus Blue Jackets experienced disruptions in some regard to their practices.

Early in the morning, the Stars abruptly canceled practice. A few hours later, the NHL released a statement saying six players and two coaches tested positive for the coronavirus. As a result, the team’s practice facility will remain closed indefinitely, and its first three games of the regular season will be postponed.

As for the Blue Jackets, they held 17 players out of practice for what the club termed as “an abundance of caution and in accordance with NHL covid-19 protocols.”

While other sports leagues have dealt with disruptions since MLB opened play in the summer, the NHL largely avoided these issues during its postseason tournament staged in “bubbles” — quarantined zones restricted to players, coaches and league staffers — in Toronto and Edmonton.

But at the dawn of this season, those barriers don’t exist. Games will be played in every team’s home arena, and players, coaches and other team employees are free to live their personal lives without any restrictions set by the league.

The possibility — if not probability — the Pittsburgh Penguins and the NHL’s 30 other active franchise will have players missing for games (at least the ones not postponed) is very real.

“It seems like throughout this whole process even from the (the quarantined conditions of the 2020 playoffs) to now, we’re taking everything day by day,” defenseman Brian Dumoulin said during a video conference.

“If something comes up or if there’s news, the team reaches out to us and there’s a change of schedule.

“All of us as players and coaches have to be adaptable. That’s what we have been, and that’s something that we have learned through this whole process.”

The NHL has established some hard rules as far as where players can (or can’t, more accurately) go when in a road city or how many of them can occupy an off-ice facility such as a weight room.

But the rules for life in their home city are ambiguous. In fact, it probably is more accurate to label them as suggestions than regulations.

The Penguins appear to have supplemented those suggestions in a pretty firm fashion.

“We had a discussion on Day 1 of training camp about it,” coach Mike Sullivan said. “As I say to the players all the time, let’s control the controllables. If we can do as good of a job as we can to mitigate the risk, I think that’s the approach that we need to take. But having said that, the pandemic is at its height right now in our country. We’re going to control what we can to try to put our players in the best possible position and mitigate the risk, and we’ll just have to react accordingly to what comes our way.”

He has reiterated that point by looking at the NFL.

“(Sullivan) talked about the NFL season and NFL teams, a lot of the top teams in the league were the ones who had the fewest amount of missed games and interrupted practice and stuff like that,” goaltender Casey DeSmith said. “We’re just trying to be as careful as possible, to be respectful of our teammates and coaches and staff. Just kind of a team effort to keep each other safe.”

Regardless of what precautions the Penguins take, it’s likely they will have to deal with absences or disruptions as the Stars and Blue Jackets already are.

They vow to be as prepared as possible for that inevitability.

“It’s crazy times we’re living in,” forward Bryan Rust said. “We have to expect the inconvenience. There’s definitely going to be times throughout the year where things are affected by it. We’ve just got to expect that’s going to happen, and we have to take things as they come.”

Follow the Penguins all season long.