The NHL and the NHL Players Association are not currently tracking which players, or how many, have received COVID-19 vaccinations.
“We have not sought player or club reporting to this point,” said NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told ESPN on Tuesday.
Don Fehr, executive director of the NHLPA, said there is no chronicle of which players have received the vaccine. An NHL agent told ESPN that, to his knowledge, there’s been no outreach from the NHLPA to generally tabulate how many players have been vaccinated, either.
“In general, are we aware there are players in all sports that have managed to get the vaccine? Yes. Do I know of it in specific individual cases? Not unless somebody tells me,” said Fehr. “I assume that if a player somehow manages to be vaccinated, he will tell his own doctor and club doctor, but I don’t have that information.”
There is no mandatory vaccination for NHL players, which is something that would have to be collectively bargained with the NHLPA. While there has been some anecdotal evidence of players having received the vaccine, the NHL has been careful about “jumping the line” for things like COVID tests and vaccines.
“We and our players and our other personnel are going to get in line with everybody else, in whatever jurisdictions they reside in, and they’re going to get vaccinated as is appropriate,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said in January. “When it comes to health and safety, we want to take care of the appropriate personnel, but we also don’t want to be a burden on the communities in which we play.”
Fehr said the players understand that, and that those who have received the vaccine likely reside in areas where they’re able to acquire it without superseding someone who needs it more.
“I have no reason to think [player vaccination] is widespread. The players know there’s a priority order based on medical need. They’re responsible adults,” he said.
The NHL has been trending in the right direction on COVID testing for the last month, after enacting new protocols on Feb. 11. The day before those protocols, the league had 49 players on its COVID-Related Absences list. On Tuesday, they had just four.
“We take it a day at a time. We never take anything for granted. Last week and the week before were more difficult weeks than this past week. Whether I can attribute those to the protocol changes, I’m not really sure I can, because we started to see the spike go down before those protocol changes would have taken effect. But I do know, having followed up on those protocol changes, the players really want to play. They want to finish the season. They too were concerned with what we were seeing around the league,” said Daly.