The Moose Jaw Warriors are no exception to the rule, especially after the last couple of weeks.
Once the Western Hockey League announced the return-to-play plan for the East Division, players on all seven teams had to enter a seven-day self-quarantine on Feb. 20. Once that was up, they reported to the Regina hub and entered another five-day lockdown, this time individually in their University of Regina dorm rooms.
Friday morning marked the first time the Warriors were finally fully free in almost two weeks, as they took the ice for their first practice in nearly a year.
And through the entire process, Warriors defenceman Nolan Jones has been a part of it.
Jones -- the 19-year-old Moose Jaw Minor Hockey product who joined the team in the Brayden Tracey mega-deal at the 2019-20 trade deadline -- reports that things haven’t been all that tough to deal with, especially with the light at the end of the tunnel.
“It wasn’t bad, the days felt longer but it was good and I always found a way to stay busy,” he said of the initial quarantine at home in the Friendly City. “Then coming here, it’s a lockdown and we have to stay in our rooms, but at the end of the day we knew we had to do it for us to have the privilege to go back on the ice and start up again… I mean, it’s never fun being away from your teammates and locked in your room for a bit, but you know what, at the end of the day it’s worth it.”
Fortunately, in the modern era, there are ways to make the time fly by.
“A whooole lot of video games and Netflix, for sure,” Jones said, adding that the popular shooter Call of Duty has been his focus, with mixed results. “With all the spare time I’ve had you’d think I’d have become pretty good at it, but I’m just average.”
Then there’s the world’s most popular streaming service.
“I just finished watching Sons of Anarchy, which was a really good show, and I have numerous shows on the run right now, I’m kind of trying to bounce back and forth between a lot of them,” he said.
“You don’t realize how much you can do on your own when you’re in lockdown. At first it’s kind of boring, but the more time you spend by yourself, you realize you can get through by doing what we’re doing.”
Of course, that’s on top of all the work with the team, as head coach Mark O’Leary touched on in a conversation with MooseJawToday.com on Friday afternoon.
“We’ve had team work-outs in the morning, Brooke Koslofski would run those, then the coaching staff would have the afternoon with the players and we’d go over systems stuff, some standards and expectations when it comes to on-ice and off-ice,” O’Leary explained. “There was a little bit of video, a bit of drawing on the whiteboard and the guys were engaged and picking it up pretty quick. That will help when training camp is so short.”
For his part, now that all the waiting is behind them, Jones is looking forward to the upcoming action-packed schedule.
“We’re going to be going, going, going constantly, but I think that’ll be good for us,” he said. “There aren’t a lot of days off, but we’ve had plenty of days off now, just from the long break and everything. And it’ll also help pass the time, it’ll go by fast, especially when you’re away from home and stuff.”
