National Hockey League players will again be conspicuous by their absence from the Olympics this year. The real reason is much more financial than health, but do the leaders of the league know how to count?
The National Hockey League (NHL) and the players’ association decided at the end of last year that their services should be dispensed with at the Beijing Olympics from February 4 to 20. The Pyeongchang Winter Games had been played the same trick four years earlier. This time, the reasons cited include the risk of infection with COVID-19, the time of isolation for athletes who would be declared positive, as well as the worsening of diplomatic relations between China and the West, the restrictions on the ground and allegations of human rights violations in the host country.
The COVID-19 pandemic has a good back, says Frank Pons, professor and director of the International Observatory in Sports Management at Laval University. The owners of the teams especially wanted to recover the three weeks of break planned during the Olympic tournament to resume their matches canceled this season because of the health crisis. And then, it was also a way to avoid alienating sponsors when their countries diplomatically boycott the Games in the name of defending human rights. “The Olympics have never been the owners’ cup of tea. Their league is a business and they don’t want to interrupt their schedule in the middle of the season. In another context, the National League would still have liked to be present in a market the size of China, but the priority was to resume the games lost this year, ”said Mr. Pons.
This decision to ignore the Beijing Games was taken “for monetary reasons”, confirms the sports columnist for Radio-Canada, Martin Leclerc, but not only by the owners. Much more interested than their employers in the Olympic tournament, to the point of having demanded that their participation be provided for in their last collective agreement, the players nevertheless surrendered to their financial arguments. It’s that owners and players live under the League’s equal income sharing regime, that players received their full salaries during the 2019-2020 season despite the losses incurred due to COVID, and that they must therefore already repay an overpayment of 2 billion.
Incomprehensible
This situation does not fail to inflict “a black eye” on the Olympic movement, observes Frank Pons, especially vis-à-vis the channels which have spent billions on television rights, in particular to be able to broadcast a flagship event like the tournament. of hockey and who find themselves with a diminished tournament. For the NHL, the losses are much more modest, the Olympic Games serving it at most to heal its brand image abroad and to assert its superiority over the other professional leagues, particularly Russian and European.
Martin Leclerc could not agree less. The Olympic tournament is not only a means for the NHL to make itself known outside of North America, it is also its most powerful means of promotion in its own market. “When you look at this objectively, it’s incomprehensible that National League leaders are reluctant to send their players to perform in front of audiences of hundreds of millions of viewers. But it’s not just that. The most-watched game in history was the final at the Vancouver Games between Canada and the United States. There are millions of Americans who never watch hockey and tune in to an Olympic final to see if the United States will win. And the National League does not want this visibility? We are talking about the championship which is vegetating at 4and rank of the professional leagues in North America and who is on the way to being overtaken by the games of the British professional soccer league? »
V-Team
Rest assured, the owners of the NHL will probably send their players to the next Winter Olympics in Milan, in 2026, because the time difference will be less unfavorable and the European market seems more interesting to them, says Mr. Pons . In the meantime, we will be entitled, in Beijing, to “a more open competition” to which national pride will not fail to add spice in spite of everything.
“Canada will not come with its B team, or even C, but S, U or V,” warns Martin Leclerc. That won’t necessarily prevent him from being competitive, after all he still managed to win the bronze medal under the same conditions in Pyeongchang. “We must not forget that we have the largest pool of players in the world. »
Canada has chosen to rely mainly on “experienced players” normally playing in Europe, but will also rely on a few youngsters. The United States have opted for a completely different strategy, with 60% of their players coming from the university leagues. Other teams, such as Russia, Finland or Sweden will also have to do without their best players normally active in the NHL. “It will certainly make for a much more unpredictable tournament. Who would have thought, at the last Games, that Germany would still be on track to win the final and the gold medal only two minutes before the end of the match? »
Then it will not only be up to the NHL, but also to the International Olympic Committee and the International Hockey Federation to see what they want to do with the Olympic tournament, notes Mr. Leclerc. “We feel they are tired of the procrastination of the National League. They might be better off with an Olympic tournament that pits the best junior players on the planet against each other rather than ending up with a Category B tournament again.”