When the Buffalo Sabres were forced to put their season on pause for a two-week hiatus after an outbreak of COVID-19 following a weekend series with the New Jersey Devils, fans waited each day to hear which players and staff had entered the NHL’s COVID protocol and who had tested positive. Among those who tested positive for the virus was head coach Ralph Krueger, a 61-year-old who was probably the last person whose name anyone wanted to see on any list.
However, Krueger made a full and speedy recovery, and a more unlikely candidate has become cause for concern among Sabres fans, teammates, and staff: 26-year-old defenseman Rasmus Ristolainen.
In a report for Finnish outlet Ilta-Sonamat, Ristolainen told reporter Sami Hoffren about his scary and severe symptoms of COVID-19 during his battle with the virus. His symptoms are enough for anyone to view as a cautionary tale of just how serious the virus can be, even for athletes in peak physical condition like Ristolainen.
Ristolainen’s Battle With COVID
Until Ristolainen’s frightening detailing of his experience with COVID-19, no professional athlete had publicly spoken about having symptoms this severe. And many people believed that for young athletes in peak health, the virus was not a major concern. They might experience cold and flu-like symptoms, aches and pains, or be completely asymptomatic, but they wouldn’t experience the brunt of it. Ristolainen’s testimony has flipped that notion on its head.
His symptoms were so bad, he said, that he had low oxygen levels for an extended amount of time, as well as serious heart problems, both symptoms of COVID-19. “When there was chest pain,” Ristolainen told Ilta-Sonomat, “it felt like my heart was cracking as I walked up the stairs.”
Ristolainen told Hoffren that when he had the virus, he was tired all the time. His chest pain went away, he said, so he thought he was getting better – only to see the chest pain return, this time with other symptoms. He said that some nights when he would go to sleep, he didn’t know if he was going to wake up in the morning.
Ristolainen also said that the entire experience is upsetting because he is still battling some of these same symptoms, keeping him out of game action for the Sabres at a time in the season when they could desperately use him on the ice. Even more upsetting to him is that the games against the Devils were played nearly three weeks ago.
“It was a pointless infection,” he said, “in the sense that the New Jersey team had infections before those games, but we were still forced to play.” The NHL’s handling of the Sabres’ and Devils’ COVID situations has seen heavy scrutiny ever since it happened.
Next Moves and Risto’s Recovery
Thankfully, Ristolainen seems to be getting a little better with each passing day and exited the NHL’s COVID-19 protocols this past Tuesday, skating for the first time since the team’s last game on Thursday in Buffalo, although he did not play in the game that night or travel with the team on their four-game road trip.
Ristolainen has said he doesn’t want to get too far ahead of himself but that if all goes well, he is aiming at a return to game action sometime next week. Others seem to think it might take longer. In any event, his focus for right now, though, remains fixated on training and gaining back some of that strength he lost over the past month.
Getting on the ice Thursday to skate around was a…
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