The sport of hockey has been thirsting for a best-on-best International Hockey Tournament featuring NHL players for quite some time now. While it took some time, the NHL will send its Players back to the Olympics for the first time since 2014.
On Friday, February 2nd, the day of the NHL All-Star Skills Competition, the League announced during a press conference along with NHLPA, IIHF, and IOC that a deal had been struck for Olympic Participation.
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In addition to the Olympic Announcement, the IIHF, NHL, and NHLPA announced the Four-Nations Faceoff in February of 2025. This is the prelude to the Olympics in 2026 and will feature the United States, Canada, Sweden, and Finland. The games will be played in the United States and Canada, with the rumored cities being Boston and Montreal.
NHL players have participated in the Olympics five times including 1998 in Nagano, 2002 in Salt Lake City, 2006 in Turin, 2010 in Vancouver, and 2014 in Sochi. We know the NHL Players wanted to go back to the Olympics.
The NHL and NHLPA agreed that as part of the Memorandum of Understanding included in the CBA that started the 2019-20 season back up after COVID shut the season down, there would be Olympic participation.
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Originally, the NHL was supposed to send its players back to the Olympics in 2022. However, with COVID wreaking havoc on the schedule that year, the NHL decided it was not in their best interest to send the players to those Olympic Games.
We all know the NHL and its owners are not fans of shutting down the season to send the players to the Olympics. But it is something the players wanted as NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman told the media this past Friday.
“There is a recognition of how important this is to the players, and in the spirit of cooperation — particularly the work that we did together during COVID — everybody felt on our side that it was the right thing to do,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said. “… This really came down to doing something because the players really wanted it.”
The NHL was always going back to the Olympics on their terms. From the start, they have always been eyeing 2026. Regardless of what you read and heard, the NHL always planned to go to the Olympics when they returned to Italy. It was what was best for business.
Besides the Olympics, the International Hockey calendar will see the NHL alternate between the Olympics and the World Cup of Hockey through at least 2032. A World Cup of Hockey is planned for 2028 and 2032.
The NHL wants to hold an All-Star Game in 2026 to send off the players to the Olympics in Milan.
Commissioner Bettman is a smart negotiator and does not say things for a reason. When he brought up the arena not being ready, that was just a call to arms to get the parties involved to work on striking a deal.
But the major sticking points over the years have been what the NHL gets out of it. The owners and the League take all the risk but get no reward. From the looks of it, the NHL is satisfied with what the media rights will look like for the 2026 Olympic Winter Games.
World Cup of Hockey Needs To Be Best-on-Best
Not to mention the other big-ticket items, which include how the insurance and travel for the players and their families would be paid. In the past, it was on the NHL, but Luc Tardif, IIHF President, clarified that the organizations and the IOC were taking care of those items.
The location of the 2030 Olympics has yet to be revealed; however, Tardif mentioned there is only one possible location, Nice.
The NHL did right by the NHLPA and honored their agreement to get it done. It is a dream come true for all the players in the NHL to back and represent their countries.
The question remains: how much of a best-on-best International Ice Hockey Tournament will this be? It remains unclear if Russia, which is still banned by the IIHF from participating in International competitions, will be allowed to participate in this event. That decision will be coming down the road.
The countdown is on to NHL participation in the Olympics once again.
