Canadian NHLers bring home gold again, but was it their last Olympics?

The 2014 Sochi Olympics have officially ended and the Canadian men successfully defended their gold medal with a 3-0 victory over Henrik Lundqvist and Sweden. While the game lacked some of the excitement from the Vancouver final between Canada and the United States, what this team accomplished was truly amazing to watch; not only did they go undefeated through six games, they never once trailed. Carey Price played incredibly and finished the tournament with .972 save percentage and back to back shutouts, allowing just three goals in five games. Now, as the players make their way back to North America and the NHL season resumes, players, fans and sports analysts alike turn their attention to the 2018 games in Pyeongchang, South Korea and the most anticipated question has to be "will the NHL players continue to play in the Winter Olympics?".

The loudest argument against player participation so far has been that the risk of injury to players is too great. The 2010 Vancouver Olympics were rather friendly to the NHL players, the Sochi Olympics, not so much. Notable injuries included a season ending knee injury to Canadian and New York Islanders Captain John Tavares; a knee injury to rookie sensation and Florida Panther Aleksander Barkov; head injury to Florida Panther Tomas Kopecky; and three hand injuries, one to Norwegian and New York Ranger Mats Zuccarello and two to Americans, namely Pittsburgh Penguin Paul Martin and Vancouver Canuck Ryan Kesler, though Kesler played every game in Sochi and it is not yet known whether the injury will cost him any NHL games. 

The players are not paid to play in the Olympics and the NHL does not directly profit from their participation, it is therefore understandable that some in the NHL feel as though they are taking the all the risk. They are sending their star players overseas to play in a two week tournament that has no bearing on their playoff aspirations and are more or less hoping for the best. Hockey is fast paced, hard hitting game and every time a player steps onto the ice he risks injury, unfortunately for a team like the New York Islanders who have lost not only their best player, but also their captain, the gamble may have been too big. While Tavares has indicated that he does not regret his decision to participate in Sochi even though it has cost him his NHL season, fans will probably always wonder whether their team could have mustered a final playoff push with him in their lineup. In 2018 if the team is a contender for the Cup, does the GM ask the players to pass on the Olympic opportunity? If so, is this overstepping on his part?

Another argument that has often been raised in the great NHL Olympic debate concerns the NHL schedule. A normal regular NHL season consists of 82 games played from the beginning of October to the beginning of April with the playoffs starting mid April. With the Olympic Games in February, the NHL would need to schedule a two week break every four years thereby compressing an already tight schedule. When the NHL resumed following the Olympic break, the teams would be left with tired, jetlagged, potentially injured stars, and any momentum that had been gained pre-Olympic break would be lost.  Teams from the west would likely take an even bigger hit because their regular season already includes long road trips across different time zones. An argument could therefore be made that Olympic years have the potential provide an unfair advantage to teams with either limited player participation or to teams that have younger players as they would be able to better equipped handle the compressed schedule and additional playing time.

The NHL, NHLPA and IIHF seem to have a bit of a strained relationship, or at least that’s how it was portrayed in the media during the negotiations regarding player participation in the upcoming Olympics. They did not sign the agreement allowing the players to go to Sochi until July 2013, almost six months after the New Collective Bargaining agreement was signed. I can't help but wonder then whether the situation with Washington Capitals forward Nicklas Backstrom will have any effect on what is perceived to be an already strained relationship. Backstrom wasn’t allowed to participate in the gold medal game because earlier in the week he had failed a drug test. No one seems to be suggesting that Backstrom was purposely doping to gain a competitive advantage over his peers, in fact it seems as though he might have been a victim of circumstances. He suffers from allergies and has been taking medication for seven years to alleviate the symptoms. As I am writing this article, there isn’t a lot of information available, some claim that he was taking Zyrtec-D while others say that it was Sudafed, and no one knows whether Backstrom will receive his silver medal. Unlike Latvian player Vitalijs Pavlov, Backstrom did not take an illegal stimulant, he failed the test because he had higher levels of pseudoephedrine in his system than what is allowed under IOC rules; since he was not disqualified from the Olympics, there is still a chance the IOC could award him the medal.

Ultimately Backstrom and/or the Swedish doctor who provided the medication are at fault in this situation, but the NHL and NHLPA are upset because he took the test on Wednesday after Sweden’s win in the quarterfinals over Slovenia and they were not informed of his ineligibility utnil a few hours before the gold medal game. The NHL has already issued a statement indicating that this will not affect the young forwards eligibility to play for Washington upon his return from Sochi. What remains to be seen is whether this unfortunate situation will sour the relationship between the IIHF and the NHL or the NHLPA. The next Olympics are four years from now, there is still plenty of time to come to terms on an agreement that would once again see NHL player participation, but negotiations are never easy when begin with anger, mistrust and hurt feelings.

Despite some of the validity of the arguments above, I still think it would be a horrible move on the part of the NHL to keep their players from participating in the Olympics Games. The Olympics are the biggest stage for sports, as Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris said after his bronze medal win, his grandmother has never seen the X-Games (where he has previously won 3 gold medals) but she’s watched the Olympics. For years now the NHL has been trying to grow their market, the last two lockouts were a direct result of lower revenues in smaller markets, so by sending the best players in the world to participate, they are getting free marketing. Dallas is not a hockey town in the same sense that it is a football town, I’m sure many had never heard of captain Jamie Benn before the Olympics, but you can be sure his lone goal during the Canada USA game was seen by millions south of the border. TJ Oshie of the St. Louis Blues became so famous after his ridiculous shootout performance against Russia that his fiancé was interviewed on national television and days later “TJ Sochi” was still trending on twitter. You can’t buy that kind of publicity, and if NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman is sincere in wanting to grow the sport, he better do everything in his power to ensure that the best in the game make an appearance every four years to represent not only their countries, but also the game of hockey.