NHL hockey players will take part in the upcoming Olympics

The National Hockey League returns to the Olympic Games after a ten-year hiatus. Its players will take part in at least the next two Winter Olympics – in Italy in 2026 and in France in 2030.

At a press conference held as part of All-Star Weekend in Toronto, one of the most important events in the NHL season calendar, its head Gary Bettman announced that league players will definitely take part in the next two Winter Olympics. The first, in 2026, will be held in Italy – in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, the second, in 2030, in France: several locations are planned for it, but previously it was assumed that the main part of the hockey tournament would be hosted by Nice.

This is an extremely significant event. The NHL ignored the Olympic tournaments for a long time. For the first time, she sent her hockey players to them, taking a long break from the regular season for this, in 1998: then the Japanese Nagano hosted the Olympics. Since then, representatives of the North American league have performed at four more Olympic Games – in Salt Lake City, Turin, Vancouver and Sochi. Each time, hockey competitions there turned into a super hit in terms of demand among the public and television ratings. The Sochi Games in 2014, at which the Canadians won gold for the second time in a row, however, turned out to be the last for the NHL at the moment.

The NHL is believed to have ignored the next Olympics, which took place six years ago in Pyeongchang, because it doubted the importance of the Korean market. In 2022, she was determined to travel to China. The Olympics clause was even included in the new collective agreement between the NHL and the League Players Association, but circumstances intervened. In December 2021, the coronavirus outbreak seriously disrupted the North American season schedule. The NHL, faced with possible financial losses due to the crisis, decided to cancel the Olympic pause, filling it with rescheduled championship matches.

The main beneficiary of the absence of hockey players from the strongest championship at the Olympics was, it seems, Russia.

Her team, made up of players from the Continental Hockey League, reached the finals in both 2018 and 2022. She won gold in Pyeongchang and silver in Beijing, losing to the Finns in the decisive match.

At the moment, the format of Russia’s participation at the 2026 Olympics has not been determined, and domestic hockey, due to the sanctions imposed after the start of the military special operation in Ukraine, is still in international isolation, which also excludes the possibility of the national team participating in top tournaments. The International Olympic Committee allowed Russian athletes to compete at the next Summer Olympics, opening in July in Paris, in a neutral status. However, admission to it for them is associated with the fulfillment of a number of strict criteria, which are unlikely to allow them to assemble a delegation that even remotely resembles a combat composition.

Alexey Dospehov