Yesterday in Klagenfurt, tomorrow in Vienna, on Thursday against Salzburg, on Sunday in Bruneck against the “wolves” of HC Pustertal – that would have been the crisp weekly program of the ice hockey leader Steinbach Black Wings. The emphasis is on would. Because after the cancellation of the KAC game “because of medical precautions” it seems unlikely that even one of these league matches will take place according to plan. “I can hardly imagine that,” said Linz manager Gregor Baumgartner.
Although all players at the Black Wings are vaccinated against the corona virus at least twice, the warning system had a massive impact before training on New Year’s Day. There are said to have been eight athletes who tested positive, some PCR results are still pending.
“We have to take it as it is. We have been living with the pandemic for two years, nothing can be calculated. It can affect anyone – including athletes,” emphasized Baumgartner. Anyone affected by an infection remains under lock and key for data protection reasons. This is how other clubs do it too.
Four of the six ICE Hockey League games scheduled for yesterday were canceled, Fehervar is struggling – so you can hear – around ten cases. At Olimpija Ljubljana there should be “only” one, but the Slovenian authorities immediately pulled the emergency brake and quarantined the entire team.
With Christian Feichtinger, the managing director of the ICE Hockey League, no panic breaks out (yet). “The situation is not as dramatic as it might sound. You could have played one or the other game, but our approach is to go to the maximum safe side,” said the Ebenseer. “The health of everyone involved is the greatest good, we are extremely careful. We have to learn how to use Omikron correctly, it is so contagious.”
The league, which orders corona tests before every match, is currently based on a threshold of four infected people per team. If the value is higher, the rejection takes place. The league was not aware of any difficult progress yesterday afternoon. “Almost all of them are without symptoms, some have a slight fever and runny noses,” reported Feichtinger. Militant addendum: “We will survive that too, we are well positioned within the league, we have first-class communication.”
The ICE has already proven its professional handling of the pandemic several times, also with the – initially criticized – conversion of the table format after the exit of the Bratislava Capitals in November. The points average model – yield divided by the number of games – enables play-offs even if each team has only played 80 percent of the basic round games.
Source: Nachrichten
