Reflecting on his ten-day quarantine, Andrew Mangiapane joked about the inconvenience of having to wait an extra few days for Amazon to deliver him a puzzle.
One can only imagine how frustrating it was to hear his Olympic hopes and dreams were delayed at least another four years.
After all, the joint decision to pull NHLers from the upcoming Beijing Games will leave the 25-year-old forward wondering for the rest of his life if his red-hot start would actually have translated into a roster spot amongst the world’s best Canadians.
“It’s tough for all of Canada, for every person that was wanting to go to the Olympics,” said Mangiapane, whose 17 goals in 28 games had the hockey world pondering the possibility he might just earn a spot as a depth winger.
“You don’t know if you’re going to make it or not, and things like that. Just to have the opportunity was nice, but it would have been cool to see Team Canada go out there and play.”
With or without him.
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On a day when Brad Marchand stole all the headlines with a tweet condemning the NHL’s decision to pull players from the Olympics, the soft-spoken Mangiapane took a far more diplomatic approach, as one might expect.
“I would have liked to kind of see what other players were doing and what was going on and happening behind the scenes before making a call for myself,” said Mangiapane, who was on Team Canada’s radar due to his scoring binge and his MVP performance at last summer’s World Championship.
“Every kid’s dream is to win a Stanley Cup, but also to win gold for your country. I would like to have gone, but given the circumstances I kind of understand why we’re not going.”
Speaking publicly for the first time since entering the league’s COVID-19 protocol Dec. 13 with five other teammates, Mangiapane said he had “some mild symptoms,” but struggled way more with boredom.
“It’s tough to sit there for ten days not doing much,” said Mangiapane, who said he occupied his time watching movies, playing video games, talking to friends, family and teammates before resorting to a late puzzle.
“Kind of scary, because you don’t know how the guys’ bodies will react to catching Covid, so you’re kind of scared for the whole team a bit. Thankfully everybody is okay.
“Say what you want, maybe it got us closer together as a team now that we went through this. It kind of builds chemistry a bit and we should be good moving forward.”
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Chemistry is what he’s been focused on building the last couple days of practice, on a revamped line with centre Dillon Dube and Brett Ritchie.
Ritchie returned to the ice after missing a month with a lower body injury suffered in a fight with Mark Borowiecki almost two months ago.
“We started at the beginning of the year together, and I think we were pretty good there,” said Mangiapane.
“We’re all pretty good players, smart players, fast and good down low in the grind area. It should be a good line for us. We’ve just got to keep building chemistry over the next few days in practice and be strong in our first game back.”
Exactly when that will be is anyone’s guess.
The Flames are scheduled to return to play Thursday in Seattle, marking their first action since Dec. 1 when a wave of the Omicron variant started hitting a team that ultimately lost 20 players and 13 coaches and support staff to quarantine.
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Only one of the four games slated for the NHL’s post-Christmas return Wednesday night has been postponed, and given that the Flames’ game on New Year’s Eve postponed was one of nine games postponed by the NHL on Tuesday due to Canadian attendance restrictions, no one in Calgary would be surprised if the Flames had their eighth game in a row postponed anytime soon.
As far as Olympic disappointments go, Flames centre Mikael Backlund said he too understood why the decision was made by the league.
“I don’t know if I would have made the team, but I had a chance and that would have been great,” said the veteran Swede, who captained his country to world championship gold in 2018.
“The way things happened with our team, time ran away. I don’t think there’s much we can do, we’ve got to finish the schedule and play 82 games. It’s very disappointing.”
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