ANAHEIM — The protocols giveth and the protocols taketh away.

The Ducks took the ice for their matchup with the Philadelphia Flyers on Tuesday night without, among others, two of their top players in team captain Ryan Getzlaf and franchise cornerstone Trevor Zegras. But those absences were balanced out by Philadelphia’s announcement Tuesday morning that leading scorer/team captain Claude Giroux and top defenseman Ivan Provorov had joined Getzlaf and Zegras on the COVID-related protocols absence list.

Such is life in the era of the pandemic, when each game on the schedule and every lineup card has reverted to being touch-and-go. That’s much as it was last season before vaccines, boosters, a full schedule with robust travel, the return of fans to stadiums in greater numbers and the more contagious but less severe omicron variant.

“It’s hard when you just come in one day and you keep losing guys, it’s never something fun,” Ducks defenseman Hampus Lindholm said. “You want to have a full, healthy lineup, especially when guys aren’t that sick and you still lose them.”

Ducks coach Dallas Eakins said their entire roster has been vaccinated and that he believed their booster prevalence was among the highest in the NHL.

“We’ve done everything we can there. Our guys have jumped in with two feet on all of that. It’s almost turning into straight luck a little bit,” Eakins said. “We’ve got guys wearing masks, we’ve got guys staying away from each other, the league is doing a great job with putting out the protocols. It just seems like you can’t duck it now.”

Eakins added that teams with one missing player or a small handful of absences were at something of a disadvantage compared to teams that had a long line of their members in the protocols.

“They get totally shut down, they don’t have to play any games shorthanded and then they all come back at once,” said Eakins, who only had 10 forwards available to him on Tuesday morning before finagling some last-second recalls from the Ducks’ also-depleted AHL roster.

Derek Grant and Nicolas Deslauriers were also in the COVID protocols, and Sam Carrick was dealing with an unspecified illness that had him suffering on Monday night and out of the lineup on Tuesday.

For Zegras’ part, he was on a timeline to potentially return Tuesday, but Eakins said he was unable to exit the isolation phase just yet.

“We’re following (protocols) to a T. The kid still feels unbelievable. He’s got no symptoms, he’s been great everyday but he’s still testing positive, so we need to keep him away from the rink,” Eakins said.

GM SEARCH INTENSIFIES

The Ducks have formed a search committee to identify candidates to be their new general manager. The committee includes former Ducks stars Paul Kariya and Scott Niedermayer, an NHL source confirmed to SCNG on Tuesday. The group is made up of the two Hall of Famers, plus Ducks CEO Michael Schulman and President of Business Operations Aaron Teats.

Ducks owners Henry and Susan Samueli also will be involved in the hiring of a replacement for Bob Murray, who resigned on Nov. 10 amid an investigation into his alleged verbal mistreatment of office staff. Murray also said he would begin treatment for alcohol abuse.

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Jeff Solomon, who joined the Ducks this season after 14 campaigns with the Kings, has served as the Ducks’ interim GM.

Pierre LeBrun of The Athletic and TSN was the first to report the makeup of the committee.

WELCOME HOME

Provorov’s lack of availability for Philadelphia opened the door for defenseman Cam York to move off the taxi squad and onto the Flyers’ roster. That signified a serendipitous homecoming for the Anaheim Hills native, who played three NHL games last year, though all of them were around 2,500 miles from his childhood home.

A 2019 first-rounder, York starred for the Junior Ducks before attending Shattuck St. Mary’s, competing in the U.S. national team’s development program and spending two years at the University of Michigan. He still carries memories of the Ducks’ Stanley Cup triumph in 2007, when he was just 6 years old.

“It was everything for me,” York told USA Hockey. “I grew up going to the Honda Center and Ducks games. I remember when they won the Stanley Cup in 2007 and it really helped hockey in California. That is really when I told myself that I wanted to be the best hockey player I could be.”