There will be no NHL players on the ice at the 2018 Winter Olympics.
The league announced Monday that its players will not be made available to their home country's teams for the games in South Korea.
A statement from the NHL reads:
"We have previously made clear that while the overwhelming majority of our clubs are adamantly opposed to disrupting the 2017-18 NHL season for purposes of accommodating Olympic participation by some NHL players, we were open to hearing from any of the other parties who might have an interest in the issue (e.g., the IOC, the IIHF, the NHLPA, etc.) as to reasons the Board of Governors might be interested in re-evaluating their strongly held views on the subject. A number of months have now passed and no meaningful dialogue has materialized. Instead, the IOC has now expressed the position that the NHL's participation in Beijing in 2022 is conditioned on our participation in South Korea in 2018. And the NHLPA has now publicly confirmed that it has no interest or intention of engaging in any discussion that might make Olympic participation more attractive to the clubs. As a result, and in an effort to create clarity among conflicting reports and erroneous speculation, this will confirm our intention to proceed with finalizing our 2017-18 regular season schedule without any break to accommodate the Olympic Winter Games. We now consider the matter officially closed."
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has said several times that team owners did not like the idea of another 17-day break in the NHL season, especially in February when the NFL season has ended and the Major League Baseball season has yet to begin.
The participation of NHL players in past Olympics has resulted in several iconic moments, including Domink Hasek's shutout for the Czech Republic in the gold medal game against Russia in 1998. For Canadian fans, there was perhaps no moment more iconic than Sidney Crosby's gold medal winning overtime goal against the United States in Vancouver in 2010.
