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Moving ice hockey to the Summer Olympics?


MisterSG1

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I have hypothetically thought of this for years, but apparently Gary Bettman (NHL Commissioner) has been wanting this to occur at least since the 1990s.

Personally, I think this a great idea myself, for many reasons, and I'll list them:

1) National Hockey League wouldn't have to pause the season if they chose to go to the Olympics

As it stands currently, since 1998 and not counting 2018 and 2022, the NHL has been to the Olympics, when this occurs, the season takes a break for about 3 weeks. This year, as it was a last minute decision to not send NHLers, the NHL is stuck with an Olympic break with nothing on. Games that were cancelled mainly due to covid fan restrictions in Canadian cities are rescheduled during this break.

Presumably this is the case for all hockey leagues around the world.

Compare this for example to how it works in soccer (outside of North America), when the World Cup traditionally happens outside of the soccer calendar.

2) Ice Hockey could be showcased in marquee Summer Olympics cities

The winter games are bound by having the appropriate terrain nearby to host alpine events. Even if recent winter games use something like an "anchor city", think Vancouver to Whistler, or Milan to Cortina, or even with Beijing, hosting in a true world city where many of the other events will be held should hypothetically expose ice hockey to more of the world. It's apples to oranges having the best hockey tournament there is being played in such small places like Sochi or Nagano, compared to potential huge world cities like Moscow or Tokyo for example.

3) Olympic ice hockey in the summer, less concern for injury risk

No one wants players to get hurt, but consider what happens normally when the NHL stops for the Olympics, players could be injured and miss the Olympics, and conversely players could get injured at the Olympics and not be able to play for their NHL clubs after the games.

 

These are a few examples, now I know many will say this right back, and I have answers for you

But hockey is a winter sport! It's played on ice!

-While indeed hockey is played on ice, how much of traditional pond hockey do people play nowadays? I'd seriously like to know this, my guess is most NHL players probably never played outdoors on ponds, especially in our world today where any ice is deemed unsafe. (Maybe I'm a coward but I'd never step on a frozen body of water ever)

You can take this idea further with Auston Matthews. He's the star of the Toronto Maple Leafs, and where did he grow up and play the game? In Arizona of all places! Similar to basketball, I'm sure most people in today's day and age think of ice hockey as being an indoor game.

-International tournaments which do exist, and great international hockey moments like the 1972 Summit Series happened in the first half of September, sure not exactly summer but nowhere near winter either (Prince Charles' Invictus Games in Toronto were held in September). That's also to say, the Canada Cup/World Cup of Hockey have all been played starting at the end of August to the beginning of September. For the last 30 years, not counting COVID seasons, the Stanley Cup has always been awarded in June

-Basketball is a "summer sport" yet why is it played in the winter here? As both the NBA and NHL have a pretty much overlapping schedule, Olympic Basketball doesn't have the same problems as Olympic hockey interfering with seasons around the world. By also using similar logic, you could argue that basketball should be moved to the winter olympics. I'm not entirely sure of this, but I believe basketball, when invented by James Naismith, was invented in a gymnasium and designed to be played there (as being an indoor sport). I'm sure many of us think of basketball in the sense of asphalt courts and thus it being impossible for a group of kids to play in winter time, but I don't think basketball started this way.

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Good luck with moving around 500 athletes from Winter to already overcrowded Summer Olympics. Unless of course you move basketball and/or handball (which always has its world champs in January) to Winter.

Snow & ice sports in winter, rest in summer - I guess that was the initial concept and for all the flaws both Olympics have, that partition really is not one that needs to be fixed just to please the NHL.

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How does the DEL react to Winter Olympics normally, does it stop play during the Olympics, and then abruptly return after the Olympics are over?

Tell me how any of that makes sense? I know your post appeared to be a somewhat snide remark, but tell me, do we really need skateboarding? Surfing? Breakdancing?

Olympic Hockey was the only true thing when the NHL was involved that could be considered a world championship. The IIHF World Championship is usually full of players from teams who didn't make the Stanley Cup Playoffs.

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It was not a snide remark. The Summer Olympics are very crowded. There are sports which are very questionable, or at least events.

German ice hockey has always been keen to get Olympic exposure - not qualifying in 2014 was a major disappointment. So yes, it is quite natural for DEL to take a break because they actually get more airtime during the Olympics. Nobody in Germany wants to watch ice hockey matches in summer.

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Hi SG1, nice to hear from you. I remember our interesting discussions from Tokyo.

Okay, first. The big one that Stefan brought up - the summer games are already bursting the seams. Anything new added these days (including surfing, skateboarding and climbing) is only done at the sarcrifice of other sports or disciplines. Not to mention the added pressure on numbers of striving for gender equality in the sports already there.

Second, the winter games sports all have one of two uniting characteristics - every single on of them involves either snow or ice. That is the criteria for the winter games and the criteria for not being in the summer games.

Now, in the winter games, ice hockey enjoys a profile as one of the prestige events - it, along with downhill skiing and figure skating, are among the blue riband attractions of the games. The mens final on the final day is traditionally the climax of the games. I doubt it would maintain that prestige if it had to compete against the summer blue ribands such as swimming, athletics and gymnastics.

Being in the winter program means it’s more likely the host team can more credibly participate. Okay, I know China isn’t exactly an ice hockey power, but it’s more he exception. If it came to summer, it becomes laughable if the likes of Australia or Brazil were more regularly automatically given a qualification berth.

Your argument seems to stem a lot from the clash with domestic leagues, and the risks that injuries pose to those leagues. This is a conundrum  that afflicts lots other sports in the summer roster too. Baseball, for example. Football/soccer for that matter also has an uneasy relationship with the Olympics - it wants to be there, but doesn’t want it outshining its own showpiece World Cup. So it imposes restrictive qualification criteria on the games footballers. Even when it comes to the World Cup, rich football clubs are often reluctant to release their expensive star players for qualifiers for risk of injuries. The conflict between the prestige of the Olympics/World Cup and the financial interests of professional sports leagues is an ongoing one.

Interestingly, I’ve seen the opposite argument often proposed - because the summer games are so packed to the brim, some indoor sports - weightlifting, wrestling, boxing etc - should be moved to the winter games where there is a bit more room to move. Not saying I like that idea either, but it has.some logic to it.

From a personal perspective, I just feel ice hockey is a quintessential winter games sport and the winter games would be lesser without it. I doubt it’s profile and prestige would benefit from being moved to the summer games.

  

Edited by Sir Rols
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Interesting points.

I guess what I was trying to say regarding my thesis on this, was that Olympic Ice Hockey is the closest thing to a true event on par with the World Cup, but the main issue of having an event in the middle of the NHL season (and presumably other domestic leagues around the world) is for quality of play to be decreased by potential injuries.

North American leagues (outside of soccer) are more 'rogue' in their nature, in that they don't belong to an international organization that governs them. NBA is not part of FIBA, NHL is not part of IIHF, and I had to look it up, but MLB is not part of IBSF. Interesting point you make about baseball too, but to be fair, I don't think MLB had ever sent its players to the Olympics, I know they have never paused a season (which honestly would be even worse than the NHL doing it, considering the very packed schedule to Major League Baseball and the game being deeply rooted in tradition). As such, NHL and NBA have different rules from their international counterparts, not extreme in the sense of CFL vs NFL, but different rules in basketball regarding possession for example.

 

Hockey as a "blue ribbon" event, I guess you're right even though a "red ribbon" is what is considered first place here. :D Men's hockey is one of the final medals, but I'm not sure if it has the same allure as the men's marathon in the summer games.

 

As for international tournaments in hockey, it's been a long problem with creating a true "World Cup" style of event for hockey. Since Canadian players were locked up in the NHL mostly when the IIHF World Champions, the NHL and IIHF came up with a tournament called the "Canada Cup", this was played in late August-early September before NHL season and occurred in the years, 1976, 1981, 1984, 1987, and 1991. The tournament was always played mostly in Canada (a few games here and there in each tournament were in held in an arena in the US, but the final was always held in Canada) and was also played with NHL rules. Infamously, the USSR won in 1981 and wasn't allowed to take the Canada Cup trophy home with them, Canada won every other time. 

In 1996, this tournament was repackaged as the "World Cup of Hockey", the only thing different was that there were now games in European cities, it happened three times, 1996, 2004, and 2016, with the 2016 edition happening entirely in the then named Air Canada Centre in Toronto. The last edition had a team of younger players called Team North America, and a lot of players from smaller European countries competed for a Team Europe (which was represented by no anthem at games).

You can see the problem here, the Canada Cup and World Cup of Hockey feel more like some sort of sideshow than a respectable competition, it only happens whenever the NHL feels like it should happen as opposed to the Olympic ice hockey tournament or FIFA World Cup. Let's not also forget what seems like a favourable outcome in each of them for Canada to win (as every meaningful game in all the tournaments were played in Canada)

The IIHF since Vancouver 2010 has been more liberal with usage of hockey rink size, but before that, all IIHF sanctioned competition before that always took place on a wider rink than what is seen in the NHL. For the record, ice hockey competition at Beijing 2022 uses the NHL sized rink rather than what we used to call "Olympic Ice" here.

 

I know my opinion of moving hockey to summer kills the unifying bond and it's probably not a good idea, but I was thinking there must be a better way to have a truly fair International Ice Hockey tournament that's fair for everyone.

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