The NHL’s announcement that they won’t be competing at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, is being lamented by fans everywhere.
They want to see the best players in the world competing. And while there’s still a chance the NHL could go to the Olympics next season, their participation seems very unlikely right now.
There really isn’t a benefit for the NHL in being in South Korea. They’re shutting down the league for more than two weeks to send players halfway around the world, and to play games in a very non-traditional market.
Games will be played at terrible times for North American television broadcasters.
The biggest benefit of playing in South Korea might be that the league would leave itself inline to play in China in the 2022 Winter Olympics, and give them a chance to build the game in the most populous nation on the planet. But whether the NHL would actually see a boost from competing in Beijing is unknown.
The fans and players wanted to see the NHL in Pyeongchang next year. But the pragmatic option was to stay out of the Olympics.
I can’t help but think about the last time the Winter Olympics were held in Asia. It was the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan, and it was the first time the best players in the world were competing in the Olympics.
As you can imagine, the excitement for the tournament was incredible. Finally, the best in the world would be competing. Canada hadn’t won gold since 1952, and this was easily our best shot at finishing on top.
I was in my sophomore year of university, and in my dorm, North Upper, we were ready for the tournament. Canada was going to win. We were going to crush the Americans, the Russians and anyone else we faced.
One of the guys in the dorm went to a certain business that had a no questions asked return policy, and purchased a television so we could watch the games on something better than the TVs we had in the dorm. It was a 27-inch, bulb screen, rear projection TV that was pretty good for its day (but would be obsolete by today’s standard).
We stayed up late to watch every Canadian game, and many of the other events as well. We weren’t alone. It was in the midst of midterms, but nobody did much studying that week.
Then a strange thing happened on the way to the gold medal coronation: we lost in the semifinal to the Czech Republic in a game that Canada struggled through for the first 55 minutes. And when we did play great, we could only beat Dominik Hasek once in the final 15 minutes of game play, and the five-round bane of hockey that is the shootout.
Everyone was crushed. Well, almost everyone. My roommate, who is an American, thought it was delightful, even though his knowledge of the players started and ended at Wayne Gretzky.
And yes, the day after Canada lost to the Czechs, we returned that 27-inch television. The boys in the dorm had as little interest in the bronze medal game as the players on Team Canada.
Still, until the shootout, it was an incredible week of bonding while staying up until 4 a.m. to watch Canada play Kazakhstan.
So while it makes sense from a business perspective for the NHL to snub next year’s Olympics, it’s sad news for the players. And it’s sad that university students across the country won’t experience the bonding associated with watching Team Canada at an Olympics in Asia.
