NHLPA’s Marty Walsh thinking big picture ahead of 2028 World Cup of Hockey
Marty Walsh, the NHLPA’s Executive Director, had very little time to settle into his role with the organization in November 2023 before plans for the 2025 4 Nations Face-Off had to be decided.
The NHL and NHLPA pulled it off quickly, marking one of the most successful international hockey tournaments ever hosted by the NHL. Before the tournament, both sides announced the return of the World Cup of Hockey in 2028, 12 years after the last offering in 2016.
In the latest episode of Frankly Speaking with Frank Seravalli, Walsh shared some of his thoughts about how the event could take place after seeing the success of the 4 Nations tournament in Montreal and Boston:
Frank Seravalli: “Let’s wrap up on the upcoming World Cup and how that will all be sorted out and handled. Eight teams, eight countries?”
Marty Walsh: “We’re not sure yet. It’s still to be worked. That’s the initial conversation. We still have some have work to do there – we have time to plan that one. We had almost no time to plan (the 4 Nations Face-Off). So we will start thinking about how that will be moving forward. I think as we get more details, we’ll be putting it out to people.
“But I think as Gary Bettman said the other day, the intention is to have host cities bid on it in the United States and Europe. So we’ll have that going on. We’ll have an exciting opportunity. We still have to have some more conversations with the IIHF to try and resolve all that if we can because some countries don’t have enough NHL players to fill out a full roster. So there’ll be lots of conversations. And I think anybody that got a taste of 4 Nations can just imagine what a full World Cup will be. And I think any federation or any host city or anybody should be looking what happened here and say, ‘Oh, I wanna be part of that.’
“The other day in Finland, I think the numbers might be off, but it’s five million people in Finland, 1.6 million watching on TV (for the game against Sweden). I think it was the second-highest-viewed sporting event in the history of Finland. World Cup soccer might’ve been number one, but that’s just, that’s a taste. Now think about that in other countries. I know my family is watching the games in Ireland. So they’re watching hockey in Ireland. So you might not be a world hockey leader, but there’s hockey all across the world.”
You can watch the full conversation below: