Having seen enough of Brian Gionta up through age 38, it was my first instinct to not set any alarms in order to watch him at age 39 from PyeongChang. At whatever hour. That way, I could register in a small way my ire to NBC, which would then insist on having Auston Matthews to Beijing in 2022.
Then I realized that bad ratings for the 2018 Winter Games from South Korea probably only would reinforce a poor decision by the NHL not to allow its players to participate. See, there is no mass audience for hockey no matter who is playing it. Therefore I will not deny a Team USA made up of career seekers and patriots the 10 minutes of fame most of them will be receiving. May they enjoy their memories for a lifetime. But the probability of them creating enduring reminiscences for the rest of us is not strong.
After participating in the last five Games, the NHL has taken its pucks and sticks and stayed home. That way, Vancouver can play at Arizona on Feb 25 rather than sometime in January or March. A lot of the same owners who couldn’t wait to shut down the league for an entire season in 2004-05 have attached urgency to a February without an interruption. They see no direct benefit in NHL Olympic participation to their local markets.
To justify such selfishness and myopia, the league cites polls stating that 73 per cent of NHL fans in the United States would rather not delay or move up an opportunity to watch Buffalo vs. Florida even for the possibility of seeing Patrick Kane going against Sidney Crosby for an Olympic medal.
Left unexplained was whether these researched “fans… were season ticket holders, subscribers to the Center Ice package or last bought a ticket when Chuck Lefley was in his prime. Since 53 per cent of Canadians allegedly also were against NHL Olympic participation, that raw data needs to be cross-referenced with percentages of the incidence of Alzheimer’s cases in that country. A full half of the populace of Canada, 27.6 million, watched the Gold medal game vs. the United States from Salt Lake City in 2002. The NHL must have polled only that other half.
When Crosby’s overtime goal beat the Americans again for the gold in 2010 in Vancouver, it was widely considered the happiest sports moment in the host country since Paul Henderson in 1972 in Moscow. As for the USA, which has NHL franchises in 15 of the top 20 metropolitan population areas and is about to add Seattle as a 16th, that 2010 gold medal game outdrew the previous fall’s World Series.
But, nah, the NHL doesn’t get anything out of the Olympics except good hockey so screw it. In this case, polls are being used by the NHL leaders like drunks lean on light poles–not for illumination, but support. The NHL and IIHF reached an impasse as to who would pay the cost of sending the pros. And five Olympics of growing worldwide impact for the NHL and its players went up in smoke.
It was all about NHL power against the IIHF control. All other rationales by the NHL for not going–like time zones, the 15-day break and injuries are excuses.
The NHL is a business, but it is out of business without our love for the game, which includes a desire to see it played at its highest-possible level. We defy anyone to tell us that interest in the sport wasn’t advanced by Dominik Hasek’s stoning of the great Canadian guns in that dramatic Nagano shootout; or by the Americans gaining redemption in Salt Lake City for their performance at Nagano with a sliver medal coached by an out-of-retirement Herb Brooks, THE American hockey icon. Or, by that Crosby overtime goal in Vancouver trumping an exhilarating one by Zach Parise for the U.S. in the last minute of regulation.
We have been covering international events since the first Canada Cup in 1976 and never seen such an efficient and self-sacrificing performance on such little preparation time as turned in by the Canadian stars at Sochi. They were airtight, an ultimate tribute to their brains for the game that makes them so mesmerizing.
Have you ever seen greater joy on any Stanley Cup winner’s face than that on Henrik Lundqvist’s, radiating all the way back to Stockholm after a tense to-the-end 2-1 gold medal victory over the proud Finns in Torino? No but you can’t take 15 days off in February to see something like that again.
Blame it on Wayne Gretzky putting the game’s most compelling records out of reach, or on the cap and parity producing just one repeat champion-in other words an iconic team–since the early nineties. But has there been a transcendent moment in the NHL and its playoffs in the last 20 years to rival the Olympic ones above?
So because the IIHF and NHL, both of whom can afford it, refuse to pay for more such thrills, NHL Olympic participation is over because it doesn’t do anything for its franchises? Right, pride in the selection of John Tavares to play at Sochi didn’t build in any way the brand of the Islanders, the NHL’s most brand-damaged franchise, before he unfortunately got hurt? Like that couldn’t have also happened in a February NHL game?
As the NHL grows to 31 teams to 32 going on 40 and the number of faceless players on faceless teams multiplies, there is no benefit to the league in granting great players the privilege of competing against each other in highly-anticipated international matches? A league that has precious and wonderful new stars to showcase, that has had only two legend-building seven game finals in the last 11 years, doesn’t want to take the hit for some Olympics wee hours starting times and grow the game, instead only the number of teams and almighty divisible franchise fees? No benefit ever to growing the game in Asia, why even bring it up? We get it that the contests will be on live when the North American audience will be asleep. That’s why God, who invented refrigeration to build hockey as a winter spectator sport, has come up with the DVR. And while New York is 14 time zones away from PyeongChang, most of Europe, where the NHL has a big stake in talent acquisition, is only eight zones away. This makes a 7 pm. start in South Korea, an 11 am. faceoff in Stockholm, like anybody there would go to work regardless with Sweden in a gold medal game. But we just want the Scandinavian countries’ players, just assume those nations’ interest. Only the US and Canada count.
Over the next few weeks, we undoubtedly will continue to read how refreshing it is that the amateurs are getting a turn again, just as they received in every Winter Games through 1994.
Never mind that neophytes don’t get such a chance in skiing, or figure skating or any other Olympic revenue-producing sport. Those are sponsored professionals competing. This romantic sentiment for the return of true sportsmen playing for their country and love of the game, also ignores the fact that the NHL stars at the Olympics are doing the same, at potentially greater sacrifice of more than just a mid-season vacation. The dreamers who can’t let go of amateur ideals after all these years of open competition in all sports are mostly people who don’t follow hockey closely, if at all; don’t care about it as much and you me until it is wrapped every four years in a flag.
Lake Placid was magic, but is never to be recreated. The Soviet Union is gone, leaving no formidable villain to stoke jingoistic passions. In fact only sort of are the Russians even allowed to send a team this time; one more reason for Alex Ovechkin–and, as an aside, how cool is it as tensions between the two superpowers heat up again, the best Russian player is also the beloved star of the team based in our nation’s capital?–to be bitterly disappointed.
How wonderful is that that the millionaire mercenaries, who have their next contract and their limbs to worry about, are willing to risk both for the sake of the competition and their countries? How disillusioning is it that the league is not listening to the persons who do the most for the game and want to advance it?
If this, like in any negotiation, is a bluff-calling ultimatum that ultimately puts the NHL to China in four years, then okay, we can sit this one out, in however much frustration. Perhaps the NHLPA, so clear in expressing its displeasure, hereafter needs to put its money where its mouth is and pay for its best and brightest members to play on sport’s biggest stage.
If not, the only consolation is that this will build an appetite for more World Cups, which, if the NHL never goes back to the Olympics, will be the only true means to determine which country is best at this game. Because it is good for business, the league never loses an opportunity to celebrate the phenomenal growth of hockey in the United States. And then it takes away the premier showcase for demonstrating it.