NHL punts on 2024 World Cup of Hockey, hoping Russian angst blows over

That the NHL and NHL Players’ Association will have gone at least 11 years between true best-on-best international competition will ultimately be the lasting stain on the legacies of Gary Bettman and Donald Fehr.

Yes, you read that correctly. Park the three cash-grab lockouts of Bettman’s tenure. They were ruthless but brilliant. The seven percent swing in revenue since 2013 has been worth an approximate $2.7 billion additional dollars in owners’ pockets over that time. That’s billion with a ‘b.’ If it were your business, you’d shut down for four months if it meant that much extra, too.

Then there was Friday’s news that the NHL and NHLPA made the joint decision to punt on playing a World Cup of Hockey in 2024, as had been in the works for well over a year. The two sides said the “current environment is not feasible to hold” a tournament at that time.

Instead, their joint statement said they will “continue to plan for the next World Cup of Hockey, hopefully in February 2025.”

Allow me to translate for you: With Russia’s ongoing and disgusting invasion of Ukraine, the NHL and NHLPA are crossing their fingers and hoping that situation will blow over and resolve itself by then, so hockey can pretend like nothing ever happened and include Russian-born players again.

The same league that spoke with bravado in February, issuing statements condemning Vladimir Putin’s invasion on Ukraine and saying they were suspending business operations with Russian partners, pausing their Russian language social media, and cutting official communication with Russia’s KHL, suddenly does not have any interest in drawing a real line in the sand to bar Russian players from a 2024 World Cup.

Then, when it became apparent that other European federations such as Czechia, Finland and Sweden were not on-board with whitewashing Russian player participation by having them skate together under a banner that was not the Russian flag, the NHL and NHLPA punted on the tournament entirely.

Yes, an international champion can be crowned without Russia, even if it means removing the official “best-on-best” tag.

So if you’re keeping score at home, Putin wins again. In addition to the havoc wreaked in Ukraine, he’s held the sport he holds nearest and dearest – the game he’s used to sportwash his authoritarian policy – hostage for at least 2024.

But the real losers are hockey fans around the globe. Not playing again until 2025, at the earliest, will make for 11 full years between true best-on-best international play. Because the 2016 World Cup of Hockey does not count – Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews were playing for the invented Team North America in that tournament.

Think about that for a minute. Perhaps the best hockey player the world has ever seen, McDavid broke into the NHL as an 18-year-old but will not have the opportunity to pull on the red maple leaf of Team Canada until after his 28th birthday. That is a colossal failure of stewardship.

When it comes to international hockey, the NHL seems to always to ask the question: What’s in it for us? They haven’t exactly hid that they continually have their hand out. The NHL doesn’t like the Olympics because they get next to nothing in return. They feel little pressure to compete in the Olympics because, especially when it’s played in a faraway time zone, what’s much harder to quantify on a spreadsheet is the value in the growth of the game at-large.

But this isn’t about growing the game in Asia or beyond. Think about this from an American perspective.

With all due respect to the 1996 World Cup of Hockey champions, this generation is the best collection of American-born talent ever. It’s not close. We’ve done the homework. We’ve projected out the early Team USA roster and the Team Canada roster – and this is the first time in a looooong time that the U.S. might actually be able to claim supremacy over Canada. They’ve at least got a fighting chance.

It would be an epic clash to see Auston Matthews and the Tkachuk boys go up against McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, Sidney Crosby and Co. Do you honestly think that wouldn’t grow the game in the U.S.? These are NHL All-Star Game type rosters, but with so much more on the line, playing for keeps and pride of country.

Some of the best and most memorable moments the sport has ever seen have been on the world stage, from the 1972 Summit Series to the 1980 Miracle on Ice to the 1987 Canada Cup to the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. You can recite them all without blinking. Paul Henderson’s saving grace, Al Michaels’ call, Gretzky to Lemieux and Crosby’s golden goal.

The NHL unilaterally pulled out of the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, citing disruption to their season. There were never any plans for a World Cup in 2020 for fear that with an end to the CBA upcoming, it may never get off the ground. The NHL pulled the plug on a return to the Olympics in Beijing in 2022 because of the pandemic. And now that we’re finally clear of COVID-19, the 2024 World Cup is delayed again.

The World Cup of Hockey is sport’s most bastardized tournament. You might as well call it the 12-year tournament, because that’s seemingly how long the gap is in between competition. It was played in 2004, then revived in 2016, and now …

If you’re counting on a World Cup in 2025, don’t hold your breath. The keyword in that statement was “hopefully.”

To play a tournament then, it would mean that the NHL would have to pause its season for 17 days or so in two consecutive Februarys, for a World Cup in 2025 and then again for the Winter Olympics in Milan in 2026. That’s if they’re actually committed to international competition. For two sides that talk so much about growing the game, all it ever seems to be is hot air.

NHL punts on 2024 World Cup of Hockey, hoping Russian angst blows over

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