At the World Hockey Summit held in Toronto earlier this month one of the areas of discussion was the creation of a Global Events Agenda which explored the possibilities to provide hockey with a long-term international event agenda for both national team and club events. I believe that in order for hockey to survive and thrive we must make sure that it gets exposure on all levels.
The first issue that one must discuss when looking at the global future of hockey events is the Olympics and the National Hockey League’s involvement. I personally believe that the NHL should stay away from the Olympics, except for in certain circumstances. One of my favorite quotes is from the end of the movie Miracle where Kurt Russell as Herb Brooks says “I've often been asked in the years since Lake Placid what was the best moment for me. Well, it was here - the sight of 20 young men of such differing backgrounds now standing as one. Young men willing to sacrifice so much of themselves all for an unknown. A few years later, the U.S. began using professional athletes at the Games - Dream Teams. I always found that term ironic because now that we have Dream Teams, we seldom ever get to dream. But on one weekend, as America and the world watched, a group of remarkable young men gave the nation what it needed most - a chance, for one night, not only to dream, but a chance, once again, to believe.” It is because I agree with this quote that I believe that we need to make a change in the make-up of the teams in the Olympics. We need to return back to having the rosters consist mostly of amateur/semi-pro players. This will benefit both the players and the NHL which I will discuss in more detail.
By having Olympic rosters consist mostly of amateur/semi-pro players it will increase the exposure for these players, giving them greater opportunity for advancement. This would also expose the amateur players to a variety of playing styles. Also by switching back to mostly amateurs it would provide a more even playing field where you are not having the extreme blowouts that have occurred in the past. The largest benefit would be for the national teams if they consisted of mostly amateurs is that they would be able to do like Team USA did before we switched to pros and have a several month long training camp where they would be able to learn a comprehensive system of play. The current system makes the Olympics into nothing more than a two-week long NHL All-Star Game.
As to the NHL they would see a couple of different benefits. The largest benefit would be in the fact that the current situation is a very large physical toll on those players involved. By having the Olympic break teams are forced to play almost every other night for the remainder of the season in order to still have the Cup occur in a reasonable amount of time. This means that by the end of the season players are truly wiped out. This increases the chance of injury because it does not allow for your players to gain the rest that their bodies need. The second benefit is that we would no longer have the three week long interruption in the middle of the NHL season which hurts the NHL both on and off the ice. On the ice the break prevents teams from truly building momentum and off the ice it can hurt the attendance for teams. Although there are some teams who saw benefits at the gate when people realized they had Olympic heroes playing there, there are most likely many more teams who had decreased gates after the Olympics because the team fell into a status of irrelevancy.
Although I believe that the amateur players, the national teams and the NHL would benefit from returning to amateurs I also believe that there should be certain exceptions for those NHL players wishing to play. These exceptions would be in limited circumstances and would have to require permission from the league and the IIHF. These circumstances would be outlined in the NHL’s future CBA and written into player contracts. Certain circumstances would include cases where the Olympics are occurring in a player’s birth nation or where it is in the best interest of all parties involved for the NHL player to participate.
In conclusion, I believe that the best situation for the Olympics and the national teams is for the NHL to remove itself from the game and to switch back to having teams consisting of mostly amateurs or minor-league players. All parties involved would benefit from this and it would allow for the growth of hockey worldwide by providing an outlet for the best younger players on a world-wide stage that will have actual media coverage.
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