Clarification on NHL's pursuit of COVID-19 vaccine; No intent on 'line-jumping'

With yesterday's announcement that the NHL was planning to secure a sizable amount of the COVID-19 vaccine privately for use in the upcoming season, there seems to be a bit of confusion as to what the league's plan truly is. If you count yourselves among those who missed the news, you can read more about the original story here.

John Shannon (Sportsnet) may have pre-emptively jumped the gun prior to making his original comments on the matter public on Twitter before he had all the facts.

A short time after striking up the band and sending the public body into a frenzy over the NHL's "line-jumping", Shannon tweeted out a retraction of sorts, backpeddling his way into clarifying that the NHL has no intent of jumping the line to secure the vaccine ahead of the general public.

Shannon made it clear in his follow-up tweet that the NHL would only be willing to procure the vaccine when it becomes available for private purchase - which, at this point, it is not. Now, that's not to say that it won't be made available for private purchase soon, but rather a clarification of things in their current state.

The NHL, being a big budget operation, is likely to score a large quantity of the vaccine at some point in the near future, given the fact that mass distribution is already being arranged in many of areas in North America and in Europe. I would imagine that most (or all) other major sports leagues will be in these same discussions with the manufacturers as well.

For the rest of us, I suppose we'll have to sit and wait our turn and take some solace in the fact that the vaccine reaching these organizations sooner rather than later likely means less - or no - interruptions of operations within these leagues, which will provide us with the entertainment we crave so much while trying to ride out the remainder of the pandemic.

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