BOSTON – If the word from the Chairman of the NHL’s Board of Governors is any indication, then any notion of the NHL players participating in the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea is truly a dead proposition.
Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs said at the B’s end-of-the-season presser on Tuesday morning that he didn’t foresee any 11th-hour change in joint discussions between the NHL, the NHLPA and the International Olympic Committee and the IIHF.
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said a month ago that his league’s players weren’t participating in the Pyeongchang Olympics next season and that the NHL was foraging ahead with a regular-season schedule that didn’t include a three-week in-season break for the Winter Games.
Jacobs echoed that sentiment citing the hardships on the league, and the lack of real visibility that the games would provide giving their setting half-way across the world.
“I don’t think it’s gonna happen…no,” said Jacobs. “When you stop and think about if we should stop and take those weeks out of our season, turn [the regular season] off, continue to depend on these players to perform for us when they get back, if they get back in good condition…I continue to say they should do what they did with basketball and play in the summer.
“You can go to the Summer Olympics just as easily, but they won’t embrace it. So it is what it is. Also, Korea doesn’t really help this situation at all for them. It’s time zones are so totally different. If you want to watch it here at 2 or 3 in the morning then okay, but I think the four people watching it don’t justify the reason for [NHL participation].”
It really is too bad given how immensely successful the NHL’s participation in the Olympics Games has been since they began participating in the tournament back in 1998.
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There still may be time given that the NHL’s participation in the 2014 Olympics wasn’t finalized until the summer months in the last Olympic cycle. Clearly, the players have voiced their opinion about preferring to represent their home countries in the tournament. But it sure sounds like the hawk contingent within NHL ownership isn’t budging on the issue barring some awfully big concessions from the IOC and IIHF that don’t seem likely to be coming.