Conflicting reports out of Vancouver as even more players are added to the COVID protocol.

The situation in Vancouver is a bad one, there's no question about it, but how bad may vary on who you ask.

In some cases there have been rumors floating around of the Vancouver Canucks potentially pulling out of the current National Hockey League season, but now a new report is downplaying that kind of talk suggesting that things may not be as bad as they initially seemed. That report comes from the Professional Hockey Writers Association's Carter Brooks, who personally spoke to one of the members of the Canucks currently on the NHL's COVID protocols list only to have that player suggest that the media is blowing things out of proportion.

"He tells me things overall aren’t as bad as the media has been making it seem," wrote Brooks on Sunday.

Those comments certainly fly in the face of what we have been hearing over the weekend, but it could very well be that the individual Brooks has spoken to is not one of those that has been seriously impacted by the virus. There have been reports of at least 1 player needed medical personnel to attend to him in his home to provide an IV treatment, and reports of players unable to get out of bed because of how sick they have become.

Although this report now makes us far less confident about the severity of the situation in Vancouver, one thing is certain though and that is that things are getting worse. Earlier we reported that a whopping 14 players from the Canucks roster had been placed on the NHL's COVID protocols list, and that number has now increased. NHL insider Chris Johnston reported on Sunday that the number had grown to a total of 16 players on the COVID protocol list. That is to say that 16 of the 23 active roster players for the Canucks at this time are on the list, a truly bewildering number of players.

In fact it is now much easier to list the players that are not currently on the list, and here they are:

Brock Boeser

JT Miller

Jimmy Vesey

Jake Virtanen

Nils Hoglander

Nate Schmidt

Jordie Benn

Hopefully the player Brooks spoke to is correct, but the situation does look dire from the outside looking in.