Zach Aston-Reese had high expectations for himself last month when he arrived in Pittsburgh for training camp. Everything seemed to be lining up perfectly.
The winger was healthy entering the past offseason, enabling him to simply focus on getting better and stronger as a player. He remained dedicated to the changes he made to his diet last year, which boosted his energy level. And he believed with the evolution of his line that he might be able to push for 20 goals.
“I worked really hard over the summer and I had a lot of confidence coming into camp,” the 27-year-old said after Monday’s practice. “I was feeling in really good shape on that last day actually, which is kind of funny how that happens.”
That day was Sept. 26, the date when he first tested positive for COVID-19.
Speaking publicly for the first time since his bout with the virus began, Aston-Reese on Monday revealed that he had been bedridden for five days and is still dealing with the effects even though he returned to the lineup in Saturday’s win.
“As soon as I found out, all the symptoms hit me,” Aston-Reese said. “It kind of felt like I had the flu for five days. Unfortunately, I had some pretty bad symptoms, so I wasn’t able to work out for 12 days — until I got my heart looked at.”
He didn’t say why that had initially been a concern for team doctors. But COVID-19 has been shown in some instances to cause heart issues such as myocarditis, which is inflammation of the heart muscle that can impact its ability to pump.
“You see some of the players around the league having heart issues, so they just wanted to make sure that I was OK,” he said. “Which I was, thankfully.”
Coach Mike Sullivan, saying the team takes player health “very seriously,” checked in a couple of times with Aston-Reese over the phone while the winger was still in quarantine. Team doctors were in touch every day. After Aston-Reese returned to practice, he was regularly spotted having conversations with his coach.
“Zach was great about just being honest with us with his feedback so that we could try to make the best decisions for him and for the team,” Sullivan explained.
Aston-Reese was cleared to practice with his teammates on Oct. 9 and needed a week of on-ice training before he was deemed ready to skate in a game. He played 16-plus minutes in Saturday’s 5-2 win against the Chicago Blackhawks.
“I noticed after the first period that I started to feel a little sluggish,” Aston-Reese said. “But I’m hoping that it’s nothing too long-term. I talked to some of the guys that have had it on this team and mutual friends that have had it. Unfortunately, everyone has said that it’s taken them like four weeks to feel normal.”
Jake Guentzel, who like Aston-Reese and the rest of the team has been vaccinated, was confirmed as positive for COVID-19 on Oct. 3, a few days after Aston-Reese. But Guentzel was asymptotic, allowing him to return to the lineup sooner.
Still, Aston-Reese credited the vaccine along with Pittsburgh’s “great” medical staff for helping him return to the lineup three weeks after first testing positive.
“I don’t want to dive too much into the whole vaccine thing. I believe in them. I think that maybe if I didn’t have [the vaccine] I could easily have been in the hospital. Who knows? Who’s to say?” he said. “But it sucks. It’s crazy to me how Jake and I both get it but Jake was asymptomatic and I was stuck in bed for five days.”
He added: “Hopefully moving forward there’s no more cases on the team.”
After Aston-Reese and Guentzel went on the NHL’s COVID protocol list, the team, fearing an outbreak, reinstituted some of its mitigation protocols from last season. Since then, the Penguins have not reported any other positive cases.
“I don’t know that we’ll have 100% assurance that we get ahead of anything in this circumstance,” Sullivan said. “Our concern was we had a few positive cases and we didn’t want it to evolve into anything more than that. So we tried to be proactive in protecting everybody inside our hockey operations department.”
That said, with the Penguins seemingly in the clear for now, Sullivan and general manager Ron Hextall on Monday met with the team’s leadership group to get input from the players on whether they feel protocols should be scaled back.
As for Aston-Reese, who is in another contract year, he hopes that his latest health setback will merely be a speed-bump on the road to a breakout season.
In 45 games in 2020-21, he had a career-high nine goals — despite, as Sullivan noted, not being used regularly on the power play. He added six assists and had a plus-10 rating while remaining a trusted defensive forward and penalty killer.
He will be used similarly this season, and the Penguins believe his line, with Teddy Blueger at center and newcomer Brock McGinn on the right wing, could be more formidable offensively if Blueger and he continue to grow their games.
“He’s an important player for us. We think he’s making strides. Each year he’s come back he’s a little bit stronger, he’s a little more confident,” Sullivan said, adding, “So we’re looking forward to seeing where we can bring his game this season.”
And so is Aston-Reese now that he is out of his bed and back on his skates.
“I’m hoping this was the last thing. … But it’s definitely frustrating,” he said.
Matt Vensel: mvensel@post-gazette.com and Twitter @mattvensel.
First Published: October 18, 2021, 7:06 p.m.
Updated: October 20, 2021, 3:09 a.m.