NHL commissioner Gary Bettman, NHL Players’ Association executive director Don Fehr, International Ice Hockey Federation president Rene Fasel and International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach met this week in New York to discuss the possible inclusion of NHL players at PyeongChang 2018.
According to Sportsnet’s Nick Kypreos and Elliotte Friedman, not much was accomplished at the meeting and there isn’t another meeting scheduled for the immediate future.
“It was abundantly clear that the NHL wanted to make it clear to the IOC that it wasn’t just a monetary thing around insurance or travel,” Kypreos explained on the Headlines segment during Hockey Night in Canada Saturday. “They have not been able to benefit the last 20 years the growth internationally like they would have liked to. They want more access to things like video and things they can use on NHL.com, really giving them a chance to grow the game internationally…We don’t know how the IOC responded to that.”
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The NHL’s board of governors have expressed concern about their players returning to compete in a sixth consecutive Olympic Games—NHLers have competed since the 1998 Games in Nagano—arguing that there are no tangible benefits to shutting down the NHL in the middle of the regular season.
The majority of players, on the other hand, are in favour of going.
“NHL players should be there and I certainly hope they are there,” Edmonton Oilers star Connor McDavid said during NHL all-star weekend. “There’s a lot of people higher up than me that are going to be figuring that one out, but 100 per cent they should go. I can’t picture an Olympics without [NHLers] to be honest.”
With files from the Associated Press
