Plenty of blame for the NHL turning down Olympics
Fans can point their fingers at all involved because no party emerges unscathed
Unless Gary Bettman has the greatest poker face in history, NHL players won’t be going to the 2018 Winter Olympics with the blessing of the league.
A few players, such as Alex Ovechkin, have said they are planning to play in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and he apparently has the support of the man who pays him, Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis.
But don’t expect a massive revolt and be prepared for an Olympic hockey tournament that could make household names of Ruben Smith (Norway), Luka Gračnar (Slovenia) and Park Woo-sang (South Korea).
In the wake of Bettman’s announcement that the NHL players were staying in North America, there was a lot of discussion as to who was to blame for the breakdown in talks between the NHL and the International Olympic Committee.
But there is no easy answer to that question because there is a lot of blame to go around.
In no particular order, here are the people you should blame for this debacle: The NHL: We’ll start here because everybody likes to bash Bettman and his friends whenever something goes wrong with the game of hockey.
The owners who are opposed to going to South Korea have a good argument. From a business point of view, there is little to be gained from shutting down the NHL for two weeks, especially when they are risking injury to their star players.
When John Tavares was injured in 2014, the New York Islanders lost millions of dollars in potential regular season and playoff revenue.
There is little evidence that Olympic hockey has grown the game — attendance still sucks in Phoenix, Florida and Carolina, and the chances of selling big TV packages in Europe and Asia are non-existent. And who wants to watch games from South Korea on TV in the middle of the night? (Montreal is 13 hours behind South Korea’s time zone.)
But the NHL has been disingenuous throughout these negotiations. If you’re opposed because you have philosophical problems, say so. But the NHL loses credibility when it suggests that all these objections would disappear if the IOC and the International Ice Hockey Federation sweeten the pot.
The negotiations dragged on far too long and there are people who still believe a deal is possible if the price is right.
The NHL also hurts its case with its recent decision to play regular-season games in China in what is basically a marketing buildup to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. The IOC: The lords of the rings have taken the high moral ground in their refusal to pay the NHL for insurance and travel costs for the NHL players. The IOC says it doesn’t pay for athletes in other sports and it needs the proceeds from the games to support non-profit sports organizations around the world.
Those are nice words, but we’re talking about the IOC, an organization that is rife with corruption.
I can recall being in Budapest when Quebec City bid for the 2002 Winter Games. Montreal lawyer Dick Pound, who was an IOC vice-president at the time, said Quebec would be nowhere on the first ballot, but would pick up steam on later ballots. In fact,
Those are nice words, but we’re talking about the IOC, an organization that is rife with corruption.
Quebec was eliminated on the first ballot.
The Games were eventually awarded to Salt Lake City and we subsequently learned the good folks from Utah bought all the votes they needed.
Sadly, this kind of rigged bidding wasn’t an isolated case. The players: The NHLPA expressed disappointment at the NHL’s decision, but there wouldn’t have been any debate if the issue of Olympic participation had been a part of the last collective agreement.
While most of the players seem to be in favour of going to South Korea, a dissenting view was offered by New Jersey Devils defenceman Ben Lovejoy. Lumping himself in with the overwhelming majority of players who wouldn’t be selected to an Olympic team, he said the two-week break in the middle of the season was a distraction and resulted in a compressed schedule. Donald Trump: Why not? The U.S. president is a master negotiator, and he let the NHL down by not entering the fray and ensuring an Olympic hockey tournament that was wonderful and huge. I’m sure that he wanted to get involved, but he couldn’t solve the medical insurance problem.