Dear Diary, it has been 355 days since Winter 2019-20 season has come abruptly to an end on March 13th, a.k.a Pandemic Friday.

So where are we at?

Well, things are starting to look up for summer hockey. We are getting vaccines, and vaccines are freedom. Today we heard that Alberta will be following BC’s lead. Any adult, 18+ according to Dr. Hinshaw will be vaccinated with the first dose by early summer if they so choose.

That is awesome, awesome news. If everyone has protection against the virus, restrictions will be eased sooner than later. Who needs cohorts when everyone is immunized? We don’t know that this will be the case, but things are leaning this way.

Hospitalizations are steady, as of today, there are 251 people being treated for COVID-19, a reduction of 10 from the day before. There were 48 people in ICU in the province. Positivity rate is 3.92 percent and R value is 1.01. So overall things are improving.

We think the government is going slow with step 2 relaxation of restrictions to buy time to jab more arms. This should prevent any notion of further lock-downs and cancellations. Majority of active cases are now in people who are 50 or younger, who experience less severe outcomes and tend to not get hospitalized.

The bottom line, we know things seem uncertain, but we are optimistic that summer hockey will happen. It will be safer than it has ever been in nearly a year. It might not start when we think it will, but it will start. And we will play! We hope you join us.