With or without Russia, 2024 World Cup of Hockey inches closer to reality

LAS VEGAS – Connor McDavid visibly perked up in his chair. He was fielding a variety of topics Thursday at the NHL Player Media Tour, from the Edmonton Oilers’ offseason moves to his pursuit of the league recordbooks, but one subject brought out his passion more than the others: the 2024 World Cup of Hockey.

McDavid is starved for best-on-best competition. He’s this century’s the greatest hockey talent, yet he’s never had the opportunity to represent Canada in a tournament featuring the best possible field of pros going head to head. As he points out, even at the 2016 World Cup, he was playing for Team North America rather than his country. And with the NHL sitting out the Pyeonchang Olympics in 2018 and Beijing Olympics in 2022, the hockey world has never enjoyed the treat of seeing McDavid playing alongside the likes of fellow Canadian icon Sidney Crosby or against the likes of American superstar Auston Matthews.

So when the 2024 World Cup comes up in discussion, McDavid becomes more verbose than normal. He represents the players as much as anyone in today’s game, and he’s vocal about how badly they want the tournament to happen a year and a half from now.

“I think I’ve been pretty open with this one: the NHL, and hockey in general, has missed out on a huge chunk of international play and best-on-best play,” McDavid said. “That would have been really, really special. “I think they missed out on a huge, huge portion of the international game that’s really going to be missed. We need to figure out a way to get an international tournament in as quickly as possible.”

Almost to a man this week at the Player Media Tour, players expressed their excitement over potentially playing in a World Cup.

“Obviously nothing’s solidified yet but any time you get to represent your country at anything it’s a pretty special honor,” said Colorado Avalanche defenseman Cale Makar. “So whenever it gets decided, you look forward to it, but at the same time you can only control what you’re doing in the moment.”

So when will it get decided? What we know so far, as announced earlier this summer by the NHL, is that the league, the NHL Players’ Association and the IIHF have an appetite for launching a World Cup event in the winter of 2024, pausing the NHL season in the process for a period expected to be 17 days. So what, if anything, has changed since the previous announcement? Daily Faceoff sat down with NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly Thursday at Vegas’ Lifeguard Arena for the latest update.

First off: Daly indicated that the intention indeed remains to stage a World Cup tournament in February of 2024. Nothing has been signed or made official, and he doesn’t see a need to rush an announcement in the near future, but he says the league is doing its due diligence in preparation for it, speaking to potential sponsors, marketers and broadcasters. As for the tournament field, Daly confirmed a story that was reported earlier Thursday that the World Cup planned an eight-team field with the final two spots determined by play-in qualifiers. Those two winners would replace the “gimmick” teams from the 2016 World Cup, Team North America and Team Europe, creating a traditional field of eight nations.

“That’s what’s currently being thought about,” Daly told Daily Faceoff. “We’re going to make the World Cup a regular property. So 2028, 2032. Longer term, we want that qualifying round to engage a number of different hockey countries and perhaps be played in the fall. We think we’re too late in the planning process this time around to do it in fall of 2023. So if we did it we’d move it to the front end of the tournament, probably do it in conjunction with the tournament itself. But again, these are all ideas at this point, nothing finalized.”

The elephant in the room: would Russia be one of the eight teams in the 2024 tournament field? In the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the IIHF has banned Russia from international competition and the NHL has severed its relationship with the KHL. It’s thus pretty safe to assume the ban would extend to the 2024 World Cup if nothing has changed in the political climate by the time the field needs to be set.

“We can pick six teams from the existing field that doesn’t include Russia and still have an ability to have a play-in for the final two spots, even not including Russia,” Daly said. “Now, we recognize the value that Russia brings to international hockey tournaments. It would be very unfortunate for our Russian players who have done nothing wrong not to have the opportunity to compete in a best-on-best competition. We’d like to come up with a way to make sure that doesn’t happen. But the realities are the realities. And what’s going on in that conflict is relevant on a world stage, on a moral stage, and we have to be prepared to make the right decisions, and we’re ultimately going to have to make a decision, but we’re not going to have to make it today.”

But what would have to happen between now and then for the NHL to include Russia in the World Cup? The invasion ending? Daly says he would love for the answer to be that simple, but the league will have to be reactive rather than proactive.

With or without Russia, the World Cup is taking shape: eight teams, play-in round, tournament during the 2023-24 season, repeated in perpetuity every four years after that. Whether we can consider its prestige on par with the Olympics or not, the players can’t wait to participate.

“I’ve always dreamed of putting on the red white and blue, playing for my country,” said Florida Panthers forward Matthew Tkachuk. “I’ve done it at the junior levels and there’s no feeling like it. So if I’d be fortunate enough to play for that team and with my brother (Brady), it would be just an absolute dream come true.

“To get best on best, playing for your country, I think is what hockey needs right now.”

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With or without Russia, 2024 World Cup of Hockey inches closer to reality

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