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The Ice Hockey Youth World Cup is a cherished Christmas and New Years tradition, and perhaps it was highly anticipated this year.
The joy that junior hockey juniors often bring to television audiences felt like a much-needed happiness pill in the compact darkness that 2020 has been.
But Tuesday’s announcement that both the captain of the national team, Tomas Montén, as the assistant captain of the team, Anders Lundberg, and the video coach Adam Almqvist are infected with covid-19, and that even the Djurgården forward , Albin Grewe, as the fourth player, must leave the team after a positive test result, changes the conditions drastically.
Even before a first joint training is completed, seven people are out of the JVM. The question is how high the number needs to be before it’s time for the Swedish Ice Hockey Association to say to stop.
How much can you patch and cook? Managing a national team before is not fair to the people who suddenly take on the responsibility of coaching at a JVM or the players who get new votes in the biggest tournament of their lives in hockey so far.
How responsible is it to send a group of teenagers with an obvious risk of infection and isolation in a hotel room in a foreign city in a foreign country? Although they are of legal age, they are still young.
On the other scale is the same teenager’s dream of playing a JVM. For most of them, the opportunity will not return. Next year they are too old.
Furthermore, it can be argued that the restrictions imposed by the Canadian authorities in consultation with the organizers are extremely harsh. This is underscored by the fact that, for example, Djurgården’s William Eklund, who was the first to be withdrawn from the team due to infection, may well be ready for matches with the club team at the same time it is decided. the JVM.
In the middle of everything there is also the moral aspect. What signals does the Swedish Ice Hockey Association send when it sends a team to Canada in the middle of a pandemic where the spread of infection continues to increase?
In the past, I leaned on the success of the NHL bubble – and the Budapest swimming bubble – and thought with some naivety that it would be possible to carry out both a safe reload before the JVM and a safe championship.
In the last few days, I have started to waver.
The first spontaneous thought When the news came from the captain of the team, Montén, now Sweden must withdraw from the championship.
But when the initial feelings stopped swelling, I came to the conclusion that the union can wait another day and look forward to another round of testing.
However, if it also contains new positive evidence, the question is whether we are not at a point where the Swedish Ice Hockey Association should withdraw from the tournament.
