Golden Knights Defenseman May Skip Olympics

Vegas Golden Knights defenseman Alex Pietrangelo is expected to be named to Team Canada's Olympic Team. One problem though, he's not sure if he's going to play.

Pietrangelo opened up recently about some concerns he has, given the fact he has a young family and there's a ton of unknowns at this point. 'Pietro' spoke to the media over the weekend and had this to say about the potential of saying 'thanks but no thanks':

There's a lot of things, especially guys with families, that we're taking a look at. I'm not going to make a decision until we get all the answers, because I think those are hard to come by right now. `I've got four kids that are under the age of three and a half. For me to be potentially locked up there for five weeks plus the Olympics, that's a long time being away from my family.' If we're not going to go or we are going to go, us with families, we've got stuff to plan.

Pietrangelo predicts to play a massive role for Team Canada as their #1 defenseman and has experience from winning gold back at the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Vegas has already dealt with a player backing out and that was goaltender Robin Lehner who decided to say no thank you to Team Sweden over COVID-19 protocols. Vegas also has Shea Theodore and Mark Stone who are both expected to be included on Team Canada and neither have commented on their commitment level.

With the potential of a five week quarantine period in another country away from your family, can you really blame Pietrangelo here?