So, the NHL is going back to the Olympics!
The NHL and the NHLPA came to an agreement with the IIHF confirming a break in the 2022 NHL regular season schedule for NHL players’ participation in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing.
The Agreement also mentions the possibility of a later decision to withdraw from the Olympics in the case that the changing COVID conditions are deemed by the NHL and NHLPA to render the participation of NHL players unsafe.
This is the 6th time in NHL history where NHL players will be included in a Winter Olympic men’s hockey tournament, which began in the 1998 Nagano Games.
After the NHL did not participate in the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, but after the NHLPA signed a new collective bargaining agreement in the 2020 pause, the league allowed players to participate in the 2022 and the 2026 Olympic Games.
The IIHF says that this agreement came after months of negotiations between the NHL, NHLPA, and IIHF wanted to ensure a safer and secure participation for NHL players in the Games.
IOC Sports Director Kit McConnell said of the decision, “We welcome the decision of the NHL, which will allow their players to participate in the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022. All the parties who were involved in coming to this agreement should be commended for this excellent result.”
NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly added, “We understand how passionately NHL Players feel about representing and competing for their countries. We are very pleased that we were able to conclude arrangements that will allow them to resume best on best competition on the Olympic stage.”
This agreement also means that we would see the Olympic debuts of some of the world’s best NHL players—Canada’s Connor McDavid, USA’s Auston Matthews, Czech Republic’s David Pastrnak, Sweden’s Victor Hedman, Finland’s Sebastian Aho, Germany’s Leon Draisaitl, Russia’s Nikita Kucherov, among many other potential candidates.
The Olympic men’s hockey tournament includes 12 countries seeded into three groups of four teams each—the same format used for the last three Winter Games.
Joining the top 8 nations seeded into the tournament according to the 2019 IIHF World Ranking—Canada, the Russian Olympic Committee, Finland, Sweden, Czech Republic, USA, Germany, and Switzerland—will be tournament hosts China, including the recently-qualified teams from Slovakia, Latvia, and Denmark, who earned the final seeds during the Men’s Final Olympic Qualification tournaments.
All 12 teams are ranked by record after group play, and the top four teams advance to the quarterfinals—the three group winners and the best 2nd place team after tiebreakers. The other 8 teams, seeded by record, play in qualification-round playoff games to get to the quarterfinals. The winners in the semifinals advance to the Gold Medal Game, while the losers play for Bronze.
2022 Tournament Groups
Group A: Canada (1st), USA (6th), Germany (7th), China (12th)
Group B: Russian Olympic Committee (2nd), Czech Republic (5th), Switzerland (8th), Denmark (11th)
Group C: Finland (3rd), Sweden (4th), Slovakia (9th), Latvia (10th)
The inclusion of Slovakia, Latvia, and Denmark is a result of the competitive balance of the Olympic field, which is needed to compensate for the drag of China’s participation. It also could allow for some veteran NHLers for a final performance for their country. Zdeno Chara is expected to lead a Slovakian entry that has a mix of experienced vets and promising youngsters, while Frans Nielsen will likely lead a Danish squad that has more prime participants in Nikolaj Ehlers and Oliver Bjorkstrand. Latvia will have a roster built around the goaltending with Elvis Merzlikins.
Slovenia, Norway, France, and Austria, who were in the Olympics in previous years, will not participate in the men’s ice hockey tournament in this year’s Olympics, so we won’t get to see established vets in Anze Kopitar and Mats Zuccarello or promising young guys in Alexandre Texier or Marco Rossi. But this is for the best for these teams who advanced clearly appearing to be the best choice on paper.
So far, NHL players are expected to participate in the Olympics, but the concerns about COVID and China could reverse course. The tournament will not change regardless on if the NHL sends their players or not, but it will have an impact on how the Olympics are viewed.
The tournament will go from February 9th, with the defending champion ROC playing Switzerland and Czech Republic playing Denmark, up until February 20th. The 12-team tournament will be played per the format of the previous Olympic men’s ice hockey tournaments.
The preliminary round will go from February 9th to February 13th with three games for each team.
For the final round, the 12 teams will be seeded according to their preliminary round records with the top four teams automatically qualified for the quarterfinals on February 16th, while the other 8 teams play a qualification playoff game on February 15th.
The semifinals are scheduled for February 18th, followed by the Bronze Medal Game on February 19th and the Gold Medal Game on February 20th.
The majority of these games will be played at the 18,826-seat National Indoor Stadium that was initially constructed for the 2008 Olympics. The ice sheets at both arenas and the practice venues will be 60 on 26 meters.
But in the years ever since Team Canada won their 2nd straight Olympic Gold title in Russia, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman unwaveringly mandated that Olympic participation does not benefit the NHL. Despite the global audience of the games, the NHL is not granted the rights to feature any picture or video from the event in their own marketing and promotional materials.
Unlike the NBA, where the Summer Olympics falls during the league’s offseason, NHL players only take part in the Winter Games if the league shuts down for three weeks in February—a time of the year where team owners want to stage home games and collect associated revenues.
The owners were not happy with that, so they blocked their players from participating in the PyeongChang Games in 2018, where a team of Olympic Athletes From Russia, led by Ilya Kovalchuk and Kirill Kaprizov, beat out other non-NHL teams to win Gold. But when the players gained some bargaining leverage while negotiating an extension to their CBA ahead of the NHL Return to Play in 2020, they made sure that Olympic participation for 2022 and 2026 was part of the CBA.
And while the NHL’s statement confirming that they will participate in the 2022 Winter Olympics, it left enough space for their out clause in the case that COVID conditions would deem play in the Olympics unsafe. The IIHF understood that the NHL needed flexibility when dealing with such an unpredictable virus. Daly said:
Our discussions and our agreement with them contemplates our ability to pull out at any time. There are different financial consequences associated with pulling out late, as opposed to sometime this fall. That’s recognized in the agreement, where there’s an assumption of costs associated with a late withdrawal. I certainly hope that we’re not in a position where we’re making that decision in January or February. If there’s a decision to be made, hopefully it comes sooner than that.
What could be a factor leading to a decision? Daly told Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli that the league has the power to withdraw from the Olympics if their schedule is disrupted, which is what happened in the 2021 season when the regular season and the playoffs ran concurrently for several days to squeeze in the last few games that were postponed and rescheduled because one, two, or both teams that were schedule to play those games dealt with a COVID outbreak.
cause of the NHL participating in the Olympics, there will not be any games scheduled between February 3rd and February 22nd. However, the 2022 All-Star Weekend, which is an important event for sponsors of the NHL, is set to be in Las Vegas on February 4th and 5th. Players making the All-Star teams who are on Olympic rosters will be able to fly together from Vegas To Beijing, where strict COVID protocols are expected to be enforced.
And because of the NHL’s participation in the Olympics, the regular season is much tighter when teams were playing. This season, the regular season will begin on October 12th, 2021, and end on April 29th, 2022. This gives the NHL five extra days to squeeze anything in, which is not much, but it’s potentially important should any games get rescheduled. The last time they did such a thing, the regular season began on October 1st, 2013, and ended on April 13th, 2014.
The IIHF and IOC will also pick up travel and insurance costs for NHL players and will cover for their guests should they be allowed to attend. One cause for concern was about COVID insurance. While the NHL and NHLPA found a provider for COVID insurance, the IIHF and IOC were not wanting to cover for additional COVID insurance, so it is going to be up to each individual player to determine whether or not they secure it.
All players who will compete in the Olympics are required to be vaccinated. However, it is possible that there would be very limited exemptions on a case-by-case basis. League sources have said that “an overwhelming majority” of players are already vaccinated.
Another thing that the NHL wanted from an Olympic agreement was expanded media and advertising rights. During a February 2020 meeting between the NHL and the IIHF, the NHL outlined that they wanted their logos and advertisements featured in Olympic games, the ability to use Olympic highlights on NHL Network or NHL.com, which they were hoping would promote the game. However, per sources, they were largely denied most of their requests.
The NHL landscape has changed since that meeting: They parted ways with their broadcast partner, NBC, who also broadcasts the Olympics. Also, there were also talks that said that the IIHF and the IOC knew that they had leverage considering that NHL players were very vocal about returning to play in the Olympics.
It should be noted that in the previous CBA, there was nothing about Olympic participation. So, the players had little say when the league and its owners decided to not participate in the 2018 Olympic Games, citing their concerns about schedule disruption and injury risks. The IOC also decided to not cover participation costs associated with travel, insurance, and accommodations for players and guests. The NHL also didn’t see enough value in the South Korean market to justify having games being played at inopportune times. This ended a run of five consecutive tournaments where they allowed their players to make their appearance.
This time around, the players won, but the new Olympic CBA clause is contingent on the NHL and NHLPA reaching a deal with the IIHF and the IOC. Those talks were not easy.
The NHL was not high on sending its players to the Olympics, but because the league agreed with the players, they negotiated on their behalf on good terms.
So, it’s all a done deal, but going back to the opt-out clause, yes, changing COVID conditions can pose a threat to the health and safety of players, which could be a reason for opting out of the Olympics.
However, there is another reason: If the NHL is affected by game cancellations. Should the league feel like they should use the Olympic break to make up games, to get a full season going, and recoup as much hockey-related revenue possible, the opt-out clause could be in play.
The language is vague, but the opt-out deadline is around January. This is something to keep an eye on.
The last time there were NHL stars in the majority of rosters in a “best-on-best” hockey tournament was in the World Cup of Hockey, which featured an electrifying “Team North America” featuring Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, and Auston Matthews. While it had its highlights, it was a preseason event. Canada won the World Cup that year.
Regarding COVID protocols, NHL players were used to them in the past one and a half years, from daily testing to hotel isolation to masks and social distancing in the venues. The Toronto and Edmonton bubbles in the 2020 Stanley Cup Playoffs were an example of that, and the restrictions in the Olympics are going to closely resemble those standards.
The Tokyo Olympics showed exactly that—spectators were not allowed entry to the venues. Everyone at the games was required to wear masks at all times and social distance. Athletes that didn’t stay in the Olympic Village were in designated hotels. They were not allowed to take public transportation to events, instead using specific transports provided to them.
The IOC has sports-specific guidelines for position tests, from how athletes competing in the games could be replaced and disqualification standards in sports.
The Beijing Games are expected to go beyond the protocols set in the Tokyo Games. The New York Times said that organizers were redesigning 39 venues during the summer to ensure that athletes “have practically no contact with referees, spectators, or journalists,” and that the groups are separated from each other. They also reported on “all-day armpit thermometers, with tiny transmitters to sound the alarm should someone develop a fever.” The IOC, along with the Chinese government, are still working on the protocols.
NHLPA Executive Director Donald Fehr sent out a memo regarding the COVID protocols in the Olympics:
All indications are that the entire Games—venues, the Village, places to eat, etc.—will be placed in a very tight bubble enforced by the Chinese government. … It is anticipated that there also will be significant restrictions on where players can go even within the bubble (only those on their regular contact list, perhaps not even other athletes in the Village), as well as numerous other requirements, like daily COVID testing, social distancing, mask wearing, and frequent temperature checks. It is also likely that players will be requires to file daily activity plans and wear GPS location devices to assist with contact tracing and ensure protocol compliance.
Protocols are not finalized for the Olympics, and questions still remain on how testing will be done and what quarantine specifics for travel to be established. Keep an eye on this as the situation develops.
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