Around the NHL: NHL Will Not Participate in 2018 Olympics

By Kevin Durso, Sports Talk Philly editor 

It was a hot topic for debate for several months: would the NHL and its players take part in the 2018 Winter Olympics.

After so much debate and speculation, the NHL finally released a statement regarding the issue on Monday and it is now official: NHL players will not be a part of the 2018 Olympics.

The statement from the NHL is as follows:

"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."

The NHL has participated in the Olympics on a regular basis since 1998. But at the 2014 Olympics, four NHLers sustained season-ending injuries while the Olympic break disrupted the NHL schedule. The IOC had also paid the NHL for their players' services by accommodating travel, insurance and guests. The IOC was not willing to pay for those costs in 2018.