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Foreign players need to arrive early for camps for work visa reasons
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Photo credit: Sergei Belski-USA TODAY Sports
Ryan Pike
Jun 15, 2020, 12:00 EDTUpdated: Jun 14, 2020, 23:49 EDT
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As we inch towards the potential return of National Hockey League action, the league is dealing with a bunch of logistical issues. The one that’s popping up now? Work visas for players playing for a team based outside their home country.
Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman reported that players are being told to arrive in their home team’s city by June 21 for some very interesting reasons.
From Friedman:
As the NHL and NHLPA negotiate an agreement to resume play, work visas must be addressed. The league’s calendar “ends” on June 30, and visas expire at that time. Since the pandemic makes it extremely difficult for the quick process of renewals, players were told in a memo “it is essential that you return as soon as possible to give your club enough time to process a renewal application on your behalf.”
The gist of the visa situation for the Flames is this: the Calgary Flames Hockey Club is a Canadian business which sponsors the non-Canadian players for work visas. The visas expire at the end of the league calendar (on June 30) and will need to be extended until probably the end of October. So they have some work to do with the federal government to ensure the immigration side of things is squared away.
There are 13 non-Canadian players on the Flames roster: Rasmus Andersson, Mikael Backlund, Elias Lindholm, Erik Gustafsson and Oliver Kylington from Sweden; Derek Ryan, Johnny Gaudreau, Matthew Tkachuk, Derek Forbort and Noah Hanifin from the United States; Juuso Valimaki from Finland; Tobias Rieder from Germany; and David Rittich from the Czech Republic. (Depending on which players are added to the expanded roster, this list will get longer.)
The challenge for the players involved is this: training camp opens on July 10 and presently there’s a requirement of a 14 day quarantine for players coming into Canada from outside the country – Rieder is currently in that process after arriving from Germany last week. But if you’re someone who wants to maximize your time with your family before flying into Canada for quarantine, suddenly the visa process eats into that window considerably. To get through a 14 day quarantine by July 10, a player would need to arrive in Canada on June 26. And if you’re going to be away from your family for months, an extra five days matters.
And this is ignoring the very real possibility that the Canadian government will modify quarantine guidelines to expand the acceptable “bubbles,” which if it happens could result in the visa process taking foreign players away from their families for almost an extra three weeks.
It’s a dumb, frustrating quirk that’s being added to what’s already a challenging situation for the teams and players.

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