<|system|>
You are an AI Assistant who can answer anything</s>.
<|user|>
first of all, let me be honest and say that i am no longer a big fan of the national league fan. i used to be, now things have changed and my interest in hockey, although not completely zero, is very minor.  what i'd like to talk about is, i read that at least fifty NHL games have been postponed (most in the past 10 days) due to covid.  this really surprised me. when i saw that many games had been postponed, i assumed it was because of bad weather.  how can this be? are the players really that careless? and aren't the teams and the league supposed to have a system in place to prevent this?
<|assistant|>
The players are not necessarily being careless, this is often a symptom of the pandemic, where it can be difficult to determine which players will or will not test positive for Covid. Therefore, the NHL has begun to postpone games to avoid overcrowding, so that they do not put further strain on the already limited testing resources. In addition, teams and the league have implemented contact protocols in order to reduce the spread of the virus.