The NHL has been clear about their desire to resume and complete the 2019-20 season at some point this summer, but that’s not shared by every player in the league. Radko Gudas was interviewed in the Czech Republic about his concerns for a restart, and Alexandra Petakova of Russian Machine Never Breaks translated it to English. Never one to hide his feelings, Gudas doesn’t think restarting the season is a good idea:
If one guy is infected, basically the whole league has it in a week, given how they are planning to have everyone play against everyone. One stupid stumble and you can cancel it all again.
Perhaps more interesting from the interview however are Gudas’ comments on his future with the Washington Capitals. The veteran defenseman explained that the team is facing a difficult salary cap situation and believes that he and “a lot of the guys with contracts about to expire” will end up leaving the Capitals this offseason. Washington has four players on the NHL roster who are scheduled for unrestricted free agency: Gudas, Ilya Kovalchuk, Brenden Dillon and, perhaps most importantly, Braden Holtby.
- The CHL has settled a class-action lawsuit that was originally filed in 2014. The legal battle was to determine whether junior players were employees or student-athletes, and the settlement will result in OHL, WHL and QMJHL franchises paying approximately $30MM. These settlement discussions were actually held before the COVID-19 shutdown. As Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet writes, the approximately $250,000 that each franchise will need to pay is not insignificant for some. This follows recent news that the Portland Winterhawks parent company filed for bankruptcy and are looking for new ownership to take over the franchise.
- Kevan Miller hasn’t played in an NHL game for more than a year, and revealed yesterday that he is eight weeks removed from another surgical procedure on his right knee. A fractured kneecap ended his 2018-19 season and kept him out for all of this year, but he is still working to be ready for the start of the 2020-21 campaign. If he is ready to play again, where he hits the ice isn’t clear. The veteran defenseman’s contract is expiring and though the Boston Bruins have admitted they will “entertain the opportunity” of bringing him back, a tightening salary cap won’t make it easy.
Hmm, usually I’m not the person to agree with someone named Radko but I may be inclined too.
gotta admit, thats not the stance I would have expected Gudas to have on this. dont quite agree but its refreshing to hear such a stance from him.
Refreshing to hear what, that’s he talking a bunch of nonsense?
“One person gets it then the whole league in a week”… Where is he hearing this garbage from, CNN?
The Cheese Wheel speaks!
“If one guy is infected, basically the whole league has it in a week, given how they are planning to have everyone play against everyone. One stupid stumble and you can cancel it all again.”
While somewhat exaggerated, the last part of that is very real: “One stupid stumble and you can cancel it all again.” Lost in these discussions is the possibility that one or more players may get tested and show false negatives. Remember, Georges Laraque just went through two bad diagnoses, and if not for HIS insistence to be properly tested for COVID-19, he could have died. I imagine more than a few players have a legit concern that the testing could get botched and they end up with the virus. Those with families are, no doubt, doubly worried about that. I’m not in favor of the increasingly popular demand of “we need a vaccine first,” but the testing has to have a high trust level.
Did Radko feel this way about H1N1, MERS, SARS etc? Fact is a professional athlete has little chance of fatal consequences and he should know that. He may get sick but he will recover. Stop with the virtue signaling and fear. Let’s get on with our lives already
He might not be thinking selfish… people in his family maybe high risk, he may not want to expose his kids or S/o to the virus so yeah I can understand where he’s coming from but that also brings up the point how long are we gonna keep living in fear about this virus… gotta get back to normal eventually