BEIJING (AP) — Jordan Weal is happy to have more outside space than just a sidewalk. Leo Komarov is glad there’s more to do outside of playing hockey.
BEIJING (AP) — Jordan Weal is happy to have more outside space than just a sidewalk. Leo Komarov is glad there’s more to do outside of playing hockey. Eric Staal just likes the atmosphere better. Being confined to the bubble in Beijing may be new for some Olympians, but it’s a familiar feeling for the dozen hockey players and two coaches who were in one of the NHL’s playoff bubbles in Toronto and Edmonton in 2020. Based on the extra space and ability to see other athletes and different sports, it might even be an improvement. “Yeah, this is better,” said Staal, Canada’s captain who was in the Edmonton bubble with the Minnesota Wild. “You’re with your team and you get to walk about in the bubble, and the NHL was a little tougher with the hallways and the walls in the streets and just only in hotels, so a little bit different, for sure. This has got a lot better feel.” The Olympic bubble is different in many ways, most notably that it’s almost two years into the pandemic and almost everyone involved is vaccinated. It’s also a much shorter period of time: roughly three weeks until the gold-medal game, while the Tampa Bay Lightning and Dallas Stars spent 65 days quarantined until the end of the Stanley Cup Final. This time there are some fans, though with fewer than 1,000 selected guests in the building, games are almost as quiet as empty Scotiabank Arena and Rogers Place when host China isn’t on the ice.
