Stamkos has interesting response to the NHL's expansion of Phase 2 groups

As you may have heard earlier Monday, the NHL is planning to expand on its current Phase 2 rules to allow for larger groups. On Tuesday, those groups are expanded to 12 players for on-ice sessions. They had been limited to six skaters since small-group workouts began in team facilities on June 8th. That announcement garnered an interesting response from Tampa Bay Lightning Captain and former first overall pick Steven Stamkos. Check it out:

It appears that Stamkos is wondering if this is a good idea. That may not be much of a surprise considering the team was forced to shut down its training facility temporarily on Friday after three players and several staff members tested positive for COVID-19 during testing that was conducted at the beginning of Phase 2. It's also worth noting that Florida has surpassed 100,000 cases of COVID-19 after reporting 2,926 new cases on Monday morning. That's around 2000 less than the entire country of Canada since the outbreak started. The state has also had more than 3000 deaths associated with COVID-19. The U.S. itself, at the time of this writing, as had close to 2.5 million confirmed cases of the novel Corona virus, and close to 125,000 deaths.

The league is expected to announce its hub cities before the end of this week. Many analysts are claiming the front runners to be Las Vegas and Vancouver, with Edmonton remaining a possibility. There have been cases players expressing their concerns over the Return to Play 24-team playoff format that would finish the 2019-20 season, although many are choosing to do so anonymously. Former NHLer Kevin Bieksa recently stated that "a lot of people that I've talked to that are going to be playing, they still don't have their equipment, they still haven't skated, they're still very skeptical. They haven't been told anything by their team, so I'm skeptical. I obviously want hockey back. I'd love to cover some games and watch it on TV and get everything back to normal but I wouldn't jump the gun if I were the fans. I wouldn't get your hopes up too much yet.”

Despite that, the NHL has plans to open training camps on July 10th, with the first game supposedly taking place near the end of July. On Friday, it was announced that 11 players in total had tested positive for COVID-19 during Phase 2. The league did not release any names.

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