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NEWS > SPORTS > CANADA KEEPS HOCKEY PLAYERS SAFE FROM H1N1
CANADA KEEPS HOCKEY PLAYERS SAFE FROM H1N1
November 11 2009
Toronto, Canada – Since the earliest days of human civilization sport has been one of the most loved and respected of national pastimes. In some cases certain sports have actually helped to define their societies and given people hope when there was
none. The Romans, as an example, used gladiator sports to entertain the masses and help consolidate power for the oligarchs. Recent sports have not held quite the same power over society but have still proven time and time again to unify people, at least temporarily, in a neutral environment.
For many nations of the world it is soccer and cricket that stand as the major sports but for the Americas, like so many other things, those sports have little sway. For the people Canada the sport that most engages their imagination and sense of national pride is hockey. With virtually every one of the 33 million people in the country almost literally breathing the sport, it is perhaps understandable that the country would give the people who represent the best in the game the best chance of survival against the dreaded H1N1 virus. That is exactly what has happened with at least two of the nation’s NHL franchises whose players and personnel have been able to skip the line and receive flu shots well before anyone else.
“We go from city to city and rink to rink. There's people that might be an avid fan who doesn't want to miss a game even though he's feeling a little sick. They come to the rink. You never know what will happen from there. We have every bit of a chance of catching it as everybody else, maybe a little bit more,” said John Mitchell, who plays centre for the Toronto Maple Leafs. “I’m not going to say that we deserve the shot more than say nurses or children but we are at serious risk for exposure and things would get really rough in this city at least if the entire team was out sick. We aren’t more deserving, we are just more valuable in some ways and it would hurt a lot more if we got sick.”
The Leafs have a 3-8-5 record thus far into the season after relatively high expectations going into the campaign. It’s not clear if the inoculations will help their on –ice performance.
“Stress can play a major role in the life of an athlete. Any professional sportsman has to be a finely tuned machine from both a physical standpoint and an emotional and mental standpoint and that of course could be seriously affected by the tension created through the possibility of infection of such a serious disease, so naturally the teams would want to relieve that stress for the betterment of the team,” said Scrape TV Sports analyst Mark Marvins. “Of course the Leafs have continued to lose so maybe the inoculations have had little impact. You can never really know, the human mind is a complicated thing.”
The Calgary Flames were the other team inoculated against the virus and currently have one of the best records in the league. It’s unclear if the two things are connected. 
“Whether its wins or losses, what’s really important is that the team continues to show up for games, something that would be impossible if they were all sick with Swine flu or even worse, dead from it. Ultimately this small group of people entertain millions, which should give them priority,” continued Marvins. “It’s fairly unlikely that anyone would have been significantly affected by the early inoculation of these teams and even more unlike that anyone would have died, though many would have been more than willing to give their lives. I mean it is hockey after all.”
All other Canadian teams have better records than the Leafs so it’s not clear if performance is tied in any way to prevalence of H1N1.
Alexi Orton, Sports Correspondent
NEWS > SPORTS > CANADA KEEPS HOCKEY PLAYERS SAFE FROM H1N1
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