NHL and the Olympics: A Premier Partnership

Recently Jacques Rogge, president of the International Olympic Committee, made an announcement urging the NHL to keep things status quo with regards to NHL players being in the Winter Olympiad that occurs every four years. Up until 1998 the NHL refused to let its players participate in the games, but now the league is starting to reconsider stopping the NHL season for weeks at a time as the players go off to represent their countries. Rogge, however, wants to keep the NHL players there.

No shit. Apparently, Rogge has a lot more sense than the NHL's Board Of Governers (it's no secret that Gary Bettman is a money-grubbing, selfish, egotistical asshat that only cares about the depth of his pockets and not how the sport of hockey actually does...but that's another story altogether.)

The Olympics were created to showcase the a country's best athletes on an international stage, competing against the best that other countries have to offer. They're pretty epic events considering they are the pinnacle of human athleticism.

Prior to 1998, however, hockey at the Winter Olympics was an absolute joke. The Games are meant to showcase the BEST athletes from each country for all the sports, so to trap NHLers in the league and prevent them from competing undermines that whole purpose.

In the 1994 Olympics Team Canada had no Gretzky, no Lemeiux, no Messier, no Coffey, no Bourque...instead they had David friggin' Harlock. Don't be surprised if you don't know who Daivd Harlock is; nobody does, and that's the point

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_hockey_at_the_1994_Winter_Olympics

Click on that link and count on one hand the number of players on the Canadian roster that you even RECOGNIZE by name. And those are supposed to be the "best" that Canada has to offer? Not even close.

It's a real shame, because I can guarantee that players were disappointed that they couldn't be there. What greater accomplishment could an athlete achieve in their lives than to participate in the Olympics? Listening to players (those who made their teams and those who didn't) speak over the past couple of months about the upcoming Olympics has shown without a doubt that they are very passionate about being there. Those who were selected feel an immense sense of honor and national pride, and the games haven't even started yet! Sadly, this opportunity was denied to many legendary NHL players in the past because of the NHL's old rules.

And now those in control of the NHL want to take away that opportunity once again.

On one hand, I can see where the NHL is coming from. They're selling a product, and they lose money when their players ship out to the Olympics because the season has to be put on hold. There's also the potential for injuries and whatnot. Yeah, I get it. But how can you deny the positive end effects that the Olympics has on hockey? The sport of hockey reached it's ultimate pinnacle after Canada won Gold against the USA in 2002. The competition, the passion, the triumph, the loss...that single game did more for the NHL than any advertising/marketing that the league has ever done for itself. Joe Sakic became a Canadian legend after the 2002 games, and I can darn well guarantee that sales of Sakic jerseys went through the roof after that.

In the boring, defensive, pre-lockout years people were beginning to stop caring about hockey...the 2002 Olympics changed that, and put in major demand for the NHL's major overhaul that happened just a few years later.

The players that play in the Olympics never come back the same, either. There's scantly a source of experience and leadership that a player could gain from anywhere that's comparable to that of the Olympics. Ask players and they'll tell you that the Olympics are well beyond the importance of even the Stanley Cup finals.

Alexander Ovechkin, that wonderfully crazy phenom, has been outspoken lately that he's going to play in the Olympics in his native Russia in 2014, whether the NHL wants him there or not. Good for him. More players need to take this stance and be outspoken about it. The players want to be there, the IOC wants them to be there, and the fans want their favorite NHL stars to be there...it's only those in the NHL's front office, those that only care about the league's profitability and not the sport or athletes, that are making this so difficult.

Hopefully the upcoming hockey Olympics (which, I predict, are going to unite the entire country in ways never before seen through sport...if you think Salt Lake in 2002 had that effect, it's on home soil for Canadians now, so you ain't seen nothin' yet) can show Bettman and the others just how important the Games are for the sport of hockey and it's players. And what's good for the sport and the players will ultimately be good for the league, which is by far the least important variable in this equation.



/rant