Winter Olympics: Ice hockey not the same without NHL players

Jay Asser 16:28 21/02/2018
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  • The United States were eliminated by a shootout loss to the Czech Republic.

    When you tune in to the Winter Olympics, you expect to see the top athletes in the world in their respective sports.

    Well, that’s not the experience viewers have gotten with men’s hockey at Pyeongchang. Unlike the women’s event, which features the best of the best, the men’s tournament is completely devoid of the game’s most talented players.

    You can thank the NHL for that. Back in April of last year, the league made the call to pass on sending its players to the Olympics, ending a run of five consecutive Games involving NHL names.

    While the withdrawal comes at the detriment of hockey fans, if you put yourself in the NHL’s shoes, it’s completely understandable why they would say ‘thanks, but no thanks’ to the Olympics.

    At the end of the day, it was a business decision.

    If the Olympics had been staged in North America, the cost benefit and convenience of playing in a more local market could have persuaded the league. But with the Games staged across the globe in South Korea, the nature of that market means little opportunity to grow the NHL brand. And with the time difference starting at 14 hours, TV viewership in North America is severely handicapped.

    Then there’s what the NHL would be losing out on back home. Having an extended break at this time of the year, when the NFL is between the Super Bowl and draft, the MLB has yet to start spring training and the NBA is in the dog days of the regular season, would rob the league of its chance to capitalise on the relatively quiet landscape of American sports.

    Throw in potential injuries suffered by star players at the Olympics and the argument for the NHL staying away becomes clearer.

    With all that said, it just feels wrong to not be watching the best players in international sport’s biggest stage. What’s the point of the Olympics otherwise?

    No offence to the players in this edition’s men’s event, or to the ‘Miracle on Ice’ of 1980 when amateur players from the United States shocked the Soviet Union, but the quality is not what it should be.

    Maybe you wouldn’t be consistently tuning in to hockey at the Olympics without at least being a casual fan of the NHL, but it’s also possible that the league could have gained more than a few new followers off the back of the Games alone.

    As far as this year goes, we’ll never know. But it’s fair to say that the NHL isn’t thriving enough for the league to play it this safe.

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