The National Hockey League schedule is officially on hiatus until Feb. 25.
On Thursday, at 9:46 p.m. PST, when the buzzer sounded ending the game between the hometown Vegas Golden Knights and the Los Angeles Kings at T-Mobile Arena, the NHL Olympic break was on. As the 18,020 fans began dispersing, several skaters and goalies were packing for flights headed to Milano Cortina, Italy. Lights were turned out in team locker rooms all around the NHL until games resume.
The NHL power brokers are halting play in the middle of their season, because they understand how important it is to players to represent their home country in Italy (there is at least one player from each NHL team participating in the Olympics).
If the players appear hyper-energized to claim bragging rights, it’s probably because the NHL hasn’t participated in the Games in a dozen years. The NHL skipped the 2018 Games in South Korea because of a dispute with the International Olympic Committee over costs. It skipped the 2022 Beijing Games because of scheduling disruptions due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Although the NHL teams have stored pucks and sticks, their American Hockey League affiliates continue with business as usual. Front office personnel, player development staff, and scouts are reporting for work, including Boston-based Mark Mowers, a pro scout for the Minnesota Wild.
“As pro scouts things are business as usual,” Mowers told The Epoch Times. “The AHL is still playing as well as college games. During the break, scouts may add a couple college games onto their schedule. Amateur scouts and development staff keep cruising along as well. Scouts do get three days off next week during the AHL All-Star break.”
But even as they continue with NHL business during the Olympic break many will surely have an eye on the dozen men’s teams in the tournament: the United States, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Finland, France, Italy, Latvia, Slovakia, Sweden, and Switzerland. Two countries, Belarus and Russia, have been barred from international competition since 2022 by the International Ice Hockey Federation—Russia for invading Ukraine, Belarus for supporting the invasion.
Not having a team led by Russia’s Alex Ovechkin, now the NHL all-time goals leader, will seem a bit weird to followers of international play once games commence at the Rho and Milano Santagiulia arenas. Other Russian stars who will be missed include the Tampa Bay Lightning’s Nikita Kucherov (2019 Hart Memorial Trophy winner), and goalie Sergei Bobrovsky, who has led the Florida Panthers to back-to-back Stanley Cup championships.
In an interview last month with Fox Digital, Jim Craig, netminder for the 1980 Team USA hockey squad that claimed gold at Lake Placid, N.Y., emphasized that the country name on the front of the jersey is more important than the player’s name on the back.
“I just hope that [Team USA has] the same commitment that the amateurs had, right. That what’s the most important thing isn’t their brand, or where they play. It’s about representing their country, and it’s not about themselves.”
The NHL, which first permitted its players to participate in the Olympics in 1998, is well represented in Milano Cortina. Canada’s top puck handlers, Connor McDavid and Nathan McKinnon, will lead their country’s scoring assault, as will U.S. puck snipers Auston Matthews and brothers Matthew and Brady Tkachuk. Sweden’s Willie Nylander and Germany’s Leon Draisaitl will also compete to grab hockey headlines.
The men’s hockey preliminary round begins on Feb. 11 with two games from Group B: Slovakia versus Finland, followed by Sweden against Italy. There are four games on tap on Feb. 12 including a Group C clash between Team USA and Latvia. Each of the dozen teams will be playing three preliminary games in their group. Then the single-elimination tournament commences, culminating in the Feb. 22 gold medal game.
For now, the NHL standings show the Tampa Bay Lightning and Carolina Hurricanes battling neck-and-neck for Eastern Conference supremacy, the Colorado Avalanche dominating the Western Conference, the Buffalo Sabres qualifying for a Wild Card playoff position that could end their 14-season streak of missing the postseason, and the defending Stanley Cup champions Florida Panthers surprisingly nowhere near qualifying for the playoffs.
Nationalism will rule for the next few weeks in Olympic hockey play, as players save Lord Stanley’s Cup for a later conversation.
