For the first time in 12 years the NHL may be sending players to the olympics

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Joshua Deeds
August 25, 2023 (2:39)

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Apparently, the National Hockey League is planning to send its players back to international play after a long wait, in fact, a decade or more for some of us.

There is some evidence that the NHL may be backtracking as it prepares to send players to the Olympic games in Milan and Cortina D'ampezzo, Italy, in 2026. Despite the league's best efforts, the league wasn't able to send players to the Olympics in 2018 and 2022.

Also, Billy Daly and the NHLPA have indicated they will be working on a return to the World Cup of Hockey in 2028, but they will host a similar international tournament in 2025 instead.

«So if we do a '25 international tournament, we do the '26 Olympics, the '28 World Cup of Hockey, the '30 Olympics, the '32 World Cup of Hockey, and so on,» Daly said at the European Player Media Tour on Wednesday, as per NHL.com's Dan Rosen. «That's the goal.»

From 1998 to 2014, the NHL had players participating in the Olympics, but the league was unable to reach a deal with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 2018.

Since there were a large number of case counts of SARSCOV2 in 2022, the NHL decided not to send its players to Beijing as a result of the pandemic. The high numbers of SARSCOV2 cases gave the NHL pause, of course.

It will be Daly's biggest challenge as well as that of the NHL and the NHLPA securing the approvals of Russian and Belarussian players for the IOC.

«That continues to be an unknown that we're all trying to navigate around and through and that certainly affects the World Cup property,» Daly added. «The IOC has made public statements that indicate to me that they're going to try very hard to include Russian athletes on some basis. Whether it's on the basis they've included them in the past where they're not really playing for a flag but they are playing and participating, I think that is probably a model they will pursue.»

Despite the fact that the IOC has presented some flexibility in regards to allowing these athletes to compete, nothing has been made official as of yet, so nothing is set in stone.

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