It’s been a busy week of negotiations regarding whether or not the NHL will agree to let its players participate in the upcoming Olympic Games.
Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman kept us updated all week, and Chris Johnston wrote about his takeaways from the week’s meetings.
Friedman discussed some of those takeaways during Saturday’s Headlines segment on Hockey Night in Canada.
“The offer was, if you want to go to the Olympic Games in Korea, we’d like three more years of extension on the current CBA,” Friedman said. (Read more about the offer here.) “We expect the players will have a formal answer, whether it’s a “no” or another proposal … before the Board of Governors meeting, which is scheduled for Dec. 8.”
Friedman also said that overseas exhibition games could be part of the deal.
“We’re all wondering about the future of international hockey, especially with China having the Olympics in 2022. One of the parts of this was exhibition games, at least in China, with the possibility of more to come,” Friedman said.
“I do think [China] is a huge factor,” he added. “I think there are owners in the National Hockey League that would be happy to skip South Korea and go to China.”
Nick Kypreos also chimed in to emphasize that escrow remains a large concern in negotiations.
“From what I’m hearing, as many as 12 pretty key representatives on various clubs say, ‘OK, what’s in it for us?’ Their big concern, of course, is the escrow and whether or not they can ever get it capped,” he said. “That’s the only way they’re really interested in having a really meaningful negotiation, if they can somehow get this escrow down.”
Like most instances when international hockey is brought up, potential injuries could be an issue.
“There are some owners here this year looking at Dallas and L.A. in particular, and the injuries that those team suffered in the World Cup and the compressed schedule, and they’re saying ‘Look, if I have a chance to win the Stanley Cup, I don’t want that to happen to me,'” said Friedman.
“We shouldn’t underestimate that being a part of this, too.”
