DENVER — Sheer chaos late Wednesday morning turned out to be a false alarm by the late afternoon for the Blues. An NHL investigation showed that several COVID-19 tests that initially indicated positive results were in error.
That means several Blues who were not on the ice for the team's morning skate are expected to be in the lineup Wednesday against the Colorado Avalanche in Game 2 of the first-round playoff series.
"All affected players were immediately isolated and further testing was done involving collected samples," the NHL said in a statement. "Those tests have returned uniformly negative results, therefore confirming that the initial reported test results were in error.
"As a result, all affected players will be eligible to play in their team’s next game.”
For the Blues that would include goalie Jordan Binnington, forwards Vladimir Tarasenko and Jaden Schwartz, and defenseman Marco Scandella. None of the four was seen on the ice during the morning skate — which actually took place at 1 p.m. Central — at Ball Arena.
Unless any of those four have injury issues, which appears unlikely, they will be in the lineup for Wednesday's 9:30 p.m. (Central) contest against the Avalanche.
However, the same will not hold true for David Perron, Jake Walman and Nathan Walker. They remained on the NHL's COVID-19 list released Wednesday — they all have been on the list for days — and thus are not eligible to play Wednesday.
Less than an hour before the team took the ice for their morning skate, general manager Doug Armstrong issued a statement regarding discrepancies in the NHL’s COVID-19 testing.
“We have discovered discrepancies in COVID test results relating to multiple players,” Armstrong said. “We have been in touch with and are working with the league to address these discrepancies with additional testing. . . ."
And then in a highly unusual move, Armstrong said neither coach Craig Berube nor any Blues players would be available to the media for Zoom interviews after the morning skate.
Among the four Blues, it's possible that Scandella was taking a “maintenance” day to rest a minor ailment. He did so at Monday’s morning skate but then played 20 minutes, 5 seconds that night against the Avalanche in the Blues' 4-1 loss.
As it turned out, the Blues weren't the only NHL playoff team dealing with questionable test results.
“This morning, we became aware of certain test results involving multiple players on two clubs (the St. Louis Blues and the Vegas Golden Knights) that had indicated positive results for the COVID-19 virus," the NHL said in its statement.
"Because those reported results emanated from the same laboratory, and due to other peculiarities and similarities as among the test results themselves, an investigation was initiated into the possibility that the initial test results reported may have been in error. "
