I guess the question people should ask themselves is, is the NHL product one which the teams are playing but it doesn’t matter what players? Or is the NHL product one which has the best hockey players in the world playing in it?
To blithely say nobody can judge a decision to not play... I dunno. It depends on the reason, so since we don’t know, we don’t know if people can judge or not, and thus negative opinions about not playing may indeed have merit. Would you feel the same about a players choice not to play if they were instrumental in your favourite teams’ success but they stayed home not so much about COVID but because they wanted to play XBOX all day instead? I think most would not.
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