NHL tells players to limit fan contact because of the coronavirus - Los Angeles Times
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NHL recommends players limit contact with fans over coronavirus concerns

By Helene Elliott
Sports ColumnistFollow
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The NHL has sent a memo to teams advising them to tell players to currently limit close interaction with fans in response to concerns about the coronavirus.

Measures suggested to protect players and fans include avoiding handshakes with fans, close contact and accepting autographed items. The NBA earlier this week issued a similar memo to its teams and advised players to shun high-fiving fans and to instead offer a fist-bump.

The San Jose Sharks on Thursday played before a season-low crowd announced at 14,517 after the Santa Clara County Public Health Department recommended “postponing or canceling mass gatherings and large community events where large numbers of people are within arm’s length of one another.” The NHL announces tickets distributed as the attendance figure at each game.

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Sharks Sports & Entertainment, in a statement posted on the team’s website just past noon Friday, said an American Hockey League game involving the San Jose Barracuda on Friday night would be played as scheduled. The company also said Thursday it would continue to evaluate future events.

Mandatory Credit: Photo by CIRO FUSCO/EPA-EFE/REX (10573016h) Operators of Naples Services sanitize the sports facility of Palabarbuto to counteract the danger of contagion from Coronavirus, Naples, Italy, 03 March 2020. Italy reported the country now has 1,694 confirmed coronavirus cases. Thirty-four people have died. Coronavirus in Italy, Napoli - 03 Mar 2020 ** Usable by LA, CT and MoD ONLY **

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Helene Elliott

Helene Elliott was with the Los Angeles Times’ Sports department from 1989 to 2024, first as a staff writer and then, starting in 2006, as a columnist. She became the first female journalist to be honored with a plaque in the Hall of Fame of a major professional sport as the 2005 winner of the Hockey Hall of Fame’s Elmer Ferguson Award, awarded to writers “who have brought honor to journalism and to hockey.” A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., and graduate of Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, she has covered 18 Olympics.

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