Brutal Week: Phantoms 'Hit Hard' By COVID, Returned Just In Time For 3-in-3 Weekend

ALLENTOWN, Pa. - If the Lehigh Valley Phantoms had a mid-week game on their schedule this week, it most likely would have been postponed.

"COVID hit us hard and we couldn't really practice," head coach Ian Laperriere told InsideAHLHockey after Friday night's game. "[We] lost a lot of bodies, and we're still losing a couple guys here and there."

After returning to practice Monday and Tuesday following the team's COVID shutdown, additional positive cases forced the team off the ice Wednesday and Thursday. With just two practices in the past 10 days, the available/healthy Phantoms players and coaching staff took to the ice for game day morning skate at PPL Center Friday before boarding the bus up the PA turnpike to Wilkes-Barre for Friday night's road game against the Penguins.

"A lot of the guys hadn't touched the ice in 3-4 days," Laperriere said after Friday night's 4-3 win. "They found a way. They showed a lot of character tonight. I'm just happy they're getting rewarded because they play for one another and they care about each other."

READ ALSO - GAME STORY: Lehigh Valley - 4 at W-B/Scranton - 3 (https://insideahlhockey.com/article/game-story-lehigh-valley-4-at-wbscranton-3-11422)

Captain Cal O'Reilly, Isaac Ratcliffe and Maksim Sushko - the first three names on the Phantoms' COVID list prior to last Wednesday's game in Hershey - were back in action Friday night in Wilkes-Barre.

Lehigh Valley still has five in the AHL's enhanced protocols: both of the team's assistant coaches Riley Armstrong and Jason Smith, goaltender Pat Nagle, defenseman Logan Day and forward Hayden Hodgson. All five are away from the team due to positive COVID tests, though Laperriere confirmed to Inside AHL Hockey after Friday night's game that his assistant coaches are asymptomatic and will be in protocol the rest of the weekend.

"Riley and Jason, they're going crazy right now because you know, they don't have any symptoms, but they have to stay away from the team because they have the virus," Laperriere explained to Inside AHL Hockey.

Not that there is ever a good time to have COVID run wild through the locker room, but it has come at a time when the Phantoms were beginning to turn the corner after a putrid start to 2021-22 had them with just three wins through their opening 19 games. Friday's win extended the Phantoms points streak to nine games (7-0-2) - a Lehigh Valley franchise record for longest streak without a regulation loss in the team's seven-year history.

"I mean, it's been really frustrating," O'Reilly told Inside AHL Hockey. "Especially, we're playing good hockey and to have these breaks and kind of get out of rhythm - it's tough on everybody. But I think, really, you can't control these things. Those are the rules and the way things are going. So you just got to do your best to stay ready. And when we get back at it, you just got to get back into it into the fire basically."

Laperriere echoed a similar sentiment.

"With the world we live in right now, you know, not only hockey, just the fact that the virus doesn't want to go away," Laperriere said, adding, "We have to go day by day and that's how my team is going about their business."

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