Dante Hannoun only played with the Raiders for half a season, but what a half season it was. Lucas Chudleigh/Apollo Multimedia

By Jeff D'Andrea

Hannoun and Gregor leave COVID-19 hotspots amid outbreak

Apr 3, 2020 | 3:03 PM

Dante Hannoun and Noah Gregor had some pretty crazy starts to their professional hockey careers, to say the absolute least.

After they helped offensively lead last year’s Prince Albert Raiders to the 2019 WHL Championship Finals victory as the two hired hands, they found themselves in two different hotspots during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hannoun was playing for HC Bolzano Foxes in the Erste Bank Eishockey Liga (EBEL) based in Austria. Bolzano is in the north of Italy, which became one of the hardest hit areas in the world by the novel coronavirus.

While that was developing, the Foxes were up leading the best-of-seven series 3-0 over HC Orli Znojmo from the Czech Republic, but things didn’t seem right during the series.

In the EBEL playoffs, teams alternate between buildings for each game, Game 1 in Bolzano, Game 2 in Znojmo and so on. But when the Foxes had to stay in Znojmo to play Game 3 because the Czechs were literally forbidden to enter Italy, the writing was on the wall.

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“We finished [Game 2], the fans were crazy and stuff. Then the league called saying we got to play either another game there or a different home game somehow because the Czechs weren’t allowed in Italy. It all kind of started to get crazy,” Hannoun said. “We stayed and played Game 3 there and eventually got back home. Then nothing happened. Everything started to get cancelled. And that’s when it all started to get crazy. We had to get border permission from the government to get across.”

At that point, Hannoun was just trying to get back home to Vancouver. He drove from Bolzano, through Austria and into Germany to fly out of Munich.

“It was just crazy, the couple days there were really panicky,” Hannoun said. “The team was scared. We didn’t know what was happening. I think everyone changed their flights three times to get home as soon as they could.”

Hannoun said he self-isolated for two weeks when he returned.

For Gregor, he’s played 28 games with the San Jose Sharks to begin his professional career. But the Sharks were the first team affected by COVID-19. Even before the NHL paused its season on March 12, the Sharks were already discussing playing games without crowds. The Santa Clara County had already banned gatherings of over 1,000 people by March 9, and the Sharks were preparing to comply with the guidelines when their road trip ended on March 17.

“That was our first step into the unknown of what was going to happen. We played a game in Chicago on a Wednesday, and that night the NBA [paused] their season. We were on the plane to St. Louis after the game and we were all kind of thinking ‘if the NBA is done, then the NHL is going to postpone their season as well,’” Gregor said. “The next morning we woke up, and that’s exactly what happened. We were on the road, flew back to San Jose and just waited to see what was going to happen. Then they finally told us the players can go back to their home cities or home countries. I got back in my car and drove home as soon as I got that notice.”

Gregor then drove all the way up to Beaumont, Alta, just south of Edmonton to be with his family.

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Jeff.dandrea@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @jeff_paNOW