Start of Quebec-based playoffs delayed

Vincent Levesque-Rousseau/QMJHL

The Quebec Major Junior Hockey League playoffs will not start this week.

On Saturday the league announced that both the Gatineau Olympiques and Quebec Remparts had a positive case of COVID-19. Those two clubs and the teams they recently played against - the Blainville-Boisbriand Armada, the Baie-Comeau Drakkar and Rimouski Oceanic - all had their activities put on hold.

On Tuesday the league delivered more bad news for the Olympiques and Remparts but positive news for the other three teams. From the release:

After another wave of COVID-19 testing, the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League announces that a total of four active cases have been diagnosed among the Quebec Remparts’ players, and 11 positive results have been recorded within the Gatineau Olympiques organization.

However, their three opponents and the officials involved in last week’s games tested negative to COVID-19. Nevertheless, the players and staff of the Drakkar, the Armada and the Océanic are also in isolation for 14 days.

The playoffs were scheduled to begin this Thursday for the Quebec-based clubs but the league said games "will not begin until at least the end of the mandatory quarantine period." That pushes the start of the playoffs into the week of April 19 at the earliest.

If the QMJHL opts to go with the previously announced format when the playoffs do (fingers crossed) begin, here's what the first-round matchups would look like:

West Division

No. 3 Drummondville vs No. 6 Sherbrooke

No. 4 Gatineau vs No. 5 Rouyn-Noranda 

Byes: No. 1 Val-d'Or and No. 2 Blainville-Boisbriand

East Division

No. 3 Victoriaville vs No. 6 Baie-Comeau

No. 4 Quebec vs No. 5 Rimouski

Byes: No. 1 Chicoutimi and No. 2 Shawinigan

If the playoffs started today in the Maritimes Division, No. 1 Charlottetown, No. 2 Bathurst and No. 3 Saint John would receive byes. No. 5 Moncton would host No. 6 Cape Breton in the first knockout game to determine who would play No. 4 Halifax in the second knockout game. The winner of the second knockout game would advance to play Charlottetown in a "first round" series while Bathurst would play Saint John in the other series.

The Maritimes Division knockout games and playoffs are scheduled to take place in May. All of this could once again change of course - the league has had bad luck with these types of scheduling announcements made far in advance. COVID isn't going away just yet and is getting worse in many parts of the country.