The Daily Faceoff Show: The NHL is planning a World Cup of Hockey for February of 2024
The NHL wants to bring back the World Cup of Hockey — but with a different twist than in 2016.
Last time around, the World Cup was played in September before the start of the 2016-17 season and the tournament featured two somewhat controversial teams, the U-23 North American Squad and a Team Europe of leftover countries that weren’t involved.
What might the tournament in 2024 look like? Frank Seravalli and Jason Gregor discussed it on Monday’s Daily Faceoff Show…
Seravalli: “One of the big things that popped up in Gary Bettman’s annual state of the NHL press conference held before the All-Star Skills Competition on Friday night was the league confirming that they’re planning with the Players’ Association to try to host a World Cup of Hockey in February of 2024.
That would be less than two years away and it would be a nice return to the international best-on-best competition and would probably be the first one since the World Cup that was held in Toronto in September of 2016.
The big change would be to play it in the middle of the season in place of All-Star weekend, which I think we’d all be for, and the players would certainly be happy to have that back on the calendar. It would be a nice gap, every two years in between the Olympics to have that best-on-best flavor.
Jason, my question to you, Bill Daly mentioned they’re going to try to improve the event and it may not look like it did in 2016. How do you handle it with the last two teams in the tournament? That was the gripe last time with team North America and Team Europe. How do you make this a complete competition with eight countries?”
Gregor: “Everyone has to remember that this is an NHL event so they’re going to want as many NHL players as they can get. The Olympics is going to be in 2026 and 2030, so alternating years. You can have all of the countries represented then.
Is it automatically going to be Slovakia and Germany as the seventh and eighth teams? I don’t think you can do that. I believe that Team Europe makes sense and even the North American team, you’re going to have young guys from the 2019 draft through to the 2024 draft will be eligible for that young team.
The NHL is going to want as many of their best players. I’m intrigued when Daly said they’ll do it differently, I’m just not sure how. I just can’t see it being eight different countries because then you’re going to eliminate some of your stars.
If Germany comes, let’s say, are you going to want 15 non-NHLers in an NHL-sanctioned event? I’d be surprised.”