On Monday, the Montreal Canadiens became the first team to miss games in the North Division this year, and today Marc Bergevin confirmed that it was due to one player testing positive for COVID-19. He also confirmed that the particular strain was “a variant of concern” which is one of the most impressively ominous things I’ve ever read in a newspaper article about hockey.
While Bergevin is saying all the confident things about how the Habs will be back in action next week (which, I’m not going to speculate either way, but I would like to point towards the word “variant” in the previous sentence), it’s already been enough to scramble things for the entire division, including the Maple Leafs.