NHL scouts and COVID: It's definitely a thing
Joe McDonnell of the Dallas Stars didn't think his risk of getting the virus was any higher than a person going to Walmart. "I said it was no biggie. Well, it is."
As Joe McDonnell looks out the window of his hotel on the shores of Lake Geneva, with the Swiss Alps off in the distance, he has had nothing but time on his hands. Of course he’d rather be watching hockey games, even on his laptop, but he can’t because the hotel in Montreux, Switzerland, has a filter that doesn’t allow him to do that.
So the Dallas Stars director of amateur scouting has been looking up interesting nuggets of information, such as how that area inspired the Deep Purple classic Smoke on the Water, a musical chronicling of how a deranged fan fired a flare gun at the roof of the Montreux Casino during a concert with Frank Zappa’s band and caused a massive blaze 50 years ago.
“This sucks,” McDonnell told Hockey Unfiltered. “It really does.”
The 60-year-old McDonnell is stuck in a hotel in Switzerland because he has COVID, which he contracted while attending the recent Five Nations Under-18 tournament in nearby Monthey. He only learned of his diagnosis last week when he took a test at the airport. He was planning on staying in Europe for a longer scouting trip, but decided to return home when Ken Holland, with whom McDonnell won four Stanley Cups with the Detroit Red Wings, invited McDonnell to attend his Hockey Hall of Fame induction. McDonnell caught the virus despite receiving the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine in Dallas.
McDonnell’s is actually a cautionary tale when it comes to the perils of scouting hockey players during a pandemic. Nobody has the exact count on the number of scouts who have been afflicted, but it has hit the NHL scouting community particularly hard. McDonnell said almost everyone on the Stars staff either has had it or currently has it. Two of the scouts that accompanied him to the tournament tested negative, but they had both previously had COVID. He has been getting calls of support from scouts of other teams who have recovered from the illness. There was a major outbreak at the USHL Fall Classic in suburban Pittsburgh in September. More than 20 scouts contracted COVID at that tournament but one observer said that when you combine the U.S. college and NHL scouts who were on hand, the number might have been closer to 60. It’s getting increasingly hard to find a scout who hasn’t had it or works for a team where there hasn’t been an outbreak.
(One reason McDonnell reached out to Hockey Unfiltered was because, not long ago, I was doing a piece on scouts and COVID after the Pittsburgh tournament at the time and he said scouting hockey games was no different than going into a Walmart. “I said then that it was no biggie,” McDonnell told Hockey Unfiltered. “Well, it is. I probably should have taken it a little more seriously.”)
When McDonnell learned of his diagnosis, he was feeling perfectly fine, but had to quarantine in the hotel for two weeks. Shortly after checking in, he went to the drugstore to load up on vitamins and as soon as he got outside, his phone pinged. He assumes that was because he was being tracked. So he left his phone in his room, got his vitamins and hasn’t left the hotel since. And sure enough, symptoms started to present themselves shortly after that.
“I don’t feel great, actually,” McDonnell said. “It feels like there’s somebody stepping on my chest. I’m just really congested. It’s like a really bad cold, but it feels like the worst cold I’ve ever had. It’s not great, but I’ll survive and I’ll be back home within a week.”
Some teams have reduced their scouts’ travels during the pandemic, restricting them to the regions they cover. But if hockey has shown us anything, it’s that this virus can spread quickly in the confines of an arena. The Ottawa Senators and San Jose Sharks have both had major outbreaks already, and there will likely be more to come. Part of what exacerbates the problem for scouts is that, even though they work for different teams, when they’re on the road they often carpool to games, stay in the same hotels and unwind in the same bars. So if one or two is carrying the virus, there’s a likelihood it’s going to spread.
Like a lot of scouts, McDonnell went to the Under-18 World Championship in Dallas last summer and had to isolate for two weeks following the tournament, which he did at his cottage. “This is different,” McDonnell acknowledged. “I’m in an 8-by-10 room here. Not good. Beautiful view, but…”