The Players should be going to the 2018 Olympics

On Monday, the NHL announced that it will not be going to the 2018 Olympics. Undoubtedly, many players will go to the Games despite the NHL being against it. Frankly, the NHL is making a huge mistake. On the one hand, it is trying to promote the game by playing a couple of preseason games in China next season. On the other hand, it is telling fans and players alike the opposite by refusing to let the players play in the Olympics.

After the Stanley Cup, the second biggest pride for an NHL player is getting to represent your country at the Olympics. It’s not the same representing your country at the World Championships in April because the players available then are from teams who missed the playoffs or were knocked out in the 1^st round. Some of hockey’s greatest moments were produced at the Olympics by NHLers. Case in point, Sidney Crosby’s golden goal is still talked about today from the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver. Also in the same Olympics, Finnish flash Teemu Selanne broke the record for most points in a single Olympics games by scoring 37 points. Pavel Bure scored 5 times in the 1995 Olympics and Dominik Hasek carried the Czech Republics to the gold medal with outstanding goaltending.

One big reason the NHL chose to skip the Olympics this time is the IOC not covering insurance costs and travel costs. The NHL makes billions of dollars in revenue each year. For them to say that they can’t cover travel costs and insurance costs is a cop out. Every year the NHL lets players go to the World Championship and those games are always held in Europe. What’s the difference between those games and the Olympics. For GM’s worried about players getting injured during the Olympics, players can get hurt anytime. Perhaps the NHL should prohibit players from playing in the World Championship too.

Whether the NHL has truly reached a final decision on this matter remains to be seen. Certainly the reaction to this announcement has been negative. For the sake of the players, fans and games, I hope the NHL reconsiders and lets the players go to Pyongchang for the 2018 Olympics.