We’re not yet waking up to Sonny & Cher every morning, but college hockey teams might feel they’re living out “Groundhog Day” with the COVID-19 pandemic entering, to borrow an eligibility term, its junior year.
St. Cloud State, ranked fifth in the latest DCU/USCHO Division I Men’s Poll, is fresh off an unexpected bye week. The Huskies’ scheduled home series last weekend against No. 7 Minnesota Duluth was called off due to COVID-19 protocols within UMD’s program. St. Cloud coach Brett Larson found out last Wednesday when Huskies sports information director Andrew Melroe hopped onto the bench midway through practice to share the news.
In addition, SCSU’s series this coming weekend at Denver has been postponed.
This isn’t the first time that SCSU has had games affected because of the pandemic, and the Huskies sweated out a player’s false positive test on the morning of their 2021 national championship game defeat against Massachusetts.
More recently, games across the country have been affected as the Omicron variant has further strained health care systems.
The Huskies have done what they feel they reasonably can — “With the definition of fully vaxxed, including boosters and whatnot, our team is fully vaccinated,” Larson said this Tuesday — but for as much as they try, ending the pandemic isn’t down just to them.
“From what I’ve seen with the youth teams around here to kids in school, it just seems like no matter what you do, you can’t be perfect,” Larson said. “There’s no way; you’d have to go lock yourself up in your room. With the guys being vaxxed and boosted, it almost feels like it’s to the point where you can only control what you can control, but there is just a little bit of risk (because) this thing is so contagious.
“I think there’s a hope that maybe the wave comes through and kind of hits hard but short, I guess, and that we can work our way through it, but I just don’t know how much more teams can do other than have their players sit in their houses, and that’s just not possible. If you get it, we’re not blaming anyone and we’re not getting on guys, saying, ‘Hey, what did you do wrong that you got it?’ It really seems to be all over the place.”
Redshirt senior forward Easton Brodzinski has spent around half of his collegiate career living through a pandemic that has cost over 840,000 American lives and has killed 5.5 million people worldwide.
Brodzinski had 13 goals last season and collected three in eight games during the NCHC’s season-opening pod at Omaha’s Baxter Arena. This season, he has a team-best nine goals and is averaging just under a point per game.
Things are going pretty well on the ice for him, at a time when ensuring playing time isn’t simply about hockey.
“There’s obviously a lot of give and take,” Brodzinski said. “Last year, we sort of didn’t have a life. We sort of hung out at home and at the rink.
“That’s something that we have to all take into consideration again, just trying to protect ourselves as much as we can so that we’re able to play, but there’s also that thin line of, ‘Hey, I still want to hang out with the guys outside of the rink. I still want to see some of my friends.’ It’s just a thin line, but you want to make sure the people around you are safe, too.”
His coach is also dealing with that. Larson knows that the job description has seen changes in the time of COVID.
“I’m paying attention to players’ health a lot more, and you’re really trying to manage rest,” Larson said. “A lot of things that were always important have become even more important now.
“Rest, hydration, their nutrition, all those things that help your immune system be as good as it can be. All those things that were always important have become almost forefront for you to try and keep your guys as healthy as possible.”
Hockey coaches, players and analysts like to talk about puck luck. Now more than ever, though, good fortune is also needed away from the ice.
“As long as we’ve done what we can do to stay as safe as we can,” Larson said, “Then that’s all we can do.”
