By Jim Kelley
It often seems to go this way.
When the Leafs or some other media centric team is failing and the governors are off in some sun-drenched area of a country other than Canada teeing up stories about the importance of a schedule change, the National Hockey League allows an interesting little pearl to slip out virtually undetected by the media hordes.
This time the NHL let it lightly be known that the Winter Olympic Games in 2014 “might be a strain on National Hockey League players, its schedule and its fans” and therefore it might not be a good idea to shut down pro sports’ longest running race to a championship just to participate in the single most hyped sporting endeavour of all time.
Or to put it another way, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman might want to bail on the Olympics.
Now I have no objection to this whatsoever. I have stated in the past, will state in the future and will continue to state until someone pries these cold, dead, hands from the keyboard that pro athletes should never have been allowed into Olympic competition. The Games should be for the benefit of kids and veteran amateurs who may or may not ever make it to the pro game but certainly deserve a chance to play for their country and themselves rather than surrender the ice, courts and playing fields to the well-healed fortunate 500 or so who often represent only themselves, their league’s marketing opportunities and their insatiable desire to be recognized on platforms and pedestals in addition to the ones provided by their respective sports.
Still, it is interesting that a league that worked so hard and announced with such celebratory fanfare that it would participate in the 1998 Games in Nagano, the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City and the 2006 Games in Italy (all leading up to the breathlessly anticipated On Canadian Soil Games in 2010 in Vancouver) would decide two years before the Vancouver affair that they will do a Sinatra and face the final curtain.
Now the cynic in me would say that there are reasons for this decision that go beyond the strain on what I would argue are the most conditioned athletes in all of pro sports, and that there might even be reasons beyond the strain on the schedule and the eyeballs of NHL hockey fans around the world.
I might argue that the commissioner might have a negotiating ploy in mind given that he controls whether or not the league shuts down and “permits” the players to play in the Games. NHL players of all countries have long been on record as saying they favour Olympic participation, so with a CBA reopening clause on the horizon, having a little negotiating leverage is never a bad thing.
Then one could also make the argument that the 2014 games are in Russia, deep in Russia and that the NHL, by virtue of a suspect transfer agreement that both sides are perennially unhappy with, might also want to hold some power over the host country. Perhaps Bettman and company seek leverage for a quid pro quo arrangement with the Russian Hockey Federation (closely tied to the Russian Olympic Organizing Committee) being the ultimate goal. An agreement favourable to the NHL regarding the cost of pulling players out of Russia and into the NHL in exchange for NHL participation that one might argue that is crucial to the Russian Games being a fiscal success.
The above holds a lot of sway in my conspiratorial mind, but then again it just might be possible that the NHL is thinking about a full scale troop withdrawal simply because the Games don’t work for them.
Except for the Salt Lake appearance in 2002, participation in the Games has been a near worthless enterprise for the NHL.
The idea that they would expose NHL hockey to a worldwide audience, build a brand in markets in and outside of North America and create a market for NHL goods and services that even the Chinese would embrace simply hasn’t happened.
When it all seemed good on the paper Bettman used to convince the board of governors that shutting down for two weeks in season was a worthwhile price to pay for the exposure and marketing opportunities that were sure to come, “da Govs” willingly went along.
But with participation comes eye-opening reality and the reality that smacked “da Govs” upside the back of the head harder then a Todd Bertuzzi payback hit was the fact that for the NHL, the Olympics simply didn’t work.
Instead of a marketing device it became a question mark, as in the numerous questions from NHL fans as to why their day-to-day hockey experience wasn’t nearly as good as what they saw when NHL players were playing under Olympic rules and on an international size sheet of ice.
“Da Govs” also had questions among themselves, such as why in the world were they cutting out a prime revenue portion of their schedule to participate in a tournament that, except for Salt Lake City, was played in time zones when no one in their markets would be watching and were relegated to network channels that fans couldn’t find with a free compass from the Versus Network in both hands.
“Da Govs” also had problems with the fact that except in Salt Lake City, teams from North America were regularly beaten in these affairs by players who normally played in the NHL but did better on their respective national teams than American and Canadian players did for theirs. Pretty tough to sell that umpteenth over-priced Toronto Maple Leafs sweater to the folks back home or in Europe when Mats Sundin is wearing a gold medal on the front of his Swedish national team jacket. Ditto for a rising sun picture of Dominik Hasek wearing Czech red and white instead of the Detroit Red Wings’ version of those colours. Especially tough when you could buy the European version on-line before the players even made back to North America.
It should be noted that Bettman’s low-key announcement might be nothing more than a trial balloon. A lot can happen between now and 2014 and that includes what comes from a still-to-be-determined relationship with Paul Kelly, the new head of the NHL Players Association, talks with the Russian Federation regarding the transfer agreement, and even the 2010 Games in Vancouver.
Still, it isn’t too much of a stretch to think that the NHL wants out of the Olympic experiment. The fact they announced it with the kind of fanfare normally reserved for one of Bruce McNall’s work release dates would indicate they really do want it to just go away.
