Frei: Let’s face it … NHL’s gonna have to skip Olympics

Unfortunately, it seems inevitable that we’ll hear in the next few minutes, hours, or on the absolute outside, days, that the NHL will skip the Winter Olympics in Beijing.

Gary Bettman and the league have until January 10 to withdraw without financial penalty, but it won’t take that long.

It might even come as I’m typing this.

It almost certainly will be a joint decision reached by the league and the NHLPA.

It’s unavoidable for a bunch of reasons.

The most intimidating is that if a player tests positive for COVID in China, the quarantine period could be three to five weeks. I’m wondering if that might be tweaked before the February 4-20 Games, but that’s the looming standard now.

That, by itself, makes a prima facie case for an NHL pullout.

There’s so much more, and it seems so obvious, I probably don’t need to run down the reasons and “advocate” the move.

But in shorthand:

— The backlog of games that already need to be rescheduled in the wake of postponements and various team shutdowns. The original schedule already was compacted, even after the return to interdivisional scheduling and travel. The Avalanche have four games to make up. That’s even if they resume play after the three-day holiday break on December 27, at Las Vegas (Colorado Hockey Now will be there – we think!). And they’re far from alone. The latest news came Monday morning, with the announcement that the Blue Jackets and Canadiens joined the list of teams shut down at least through the break. As of Monday afternoon, there were nine teams in that situation.

— The likelihood that there are more postponements to come. Even if the NHL modifies after January 7 its re-tightened protocol (i.e., daily testing and more zealous standards at and away from the rinks), perhaps more closely emulating the NFL’s backing off on testing and relying on players to self-report test-triggering symptoms, that won’t be a magic solution. Plus, among the complications are: a) having teams in two nations and Canada being more scrupulous than the USA; and, b) the NHL being an indoor game.

— And, yes, health concerns about the Olympics becoming a potential spreader event, even to healthy NHL players who have been vaccinated. That’s where I’m a bit confused by the speculation about largely replacement rosters; why can that concern be waved off for non-NHL players, regardless of which nation’s roster they’re on?

— Turning the Olympic break into staggered bye weeks or fortnights would open up slots for rescheduled games. Or, however it needs to be done. Many arenas loaded up on concerts during the Olympic break, so that will be a concern.

All of that doesn’t even get into the separate issue of whether provinces, states or cities increasingly mandate restrictions on crowds.

(Some of the issues certainly are arguable, but anyone reacting to this by turning it into a blue/red political debate with lame, scripted lines from templates shall be levied a game-misconduct.)

One of the NHL’s strengths — before the NBA followed — has been its international talent pool and its players’ willingness and eagerness to represent their nations in outside competitions. Among them: World Cup of Hockey. The IIHF’s World Championships. Olympics, Spengler Cup. You can throw in the World Juniors, too.

I’ve covered the Olympics both minus and with full NHL participation and two editions of the World Cup. (One of my regrets is not being at Lake Placid. I had to settle for covering Miracle on Ice hero Jim Craig’s much-ballyhooed NHL bow shortly after for the Flames against the Rockies. The emotional night was hoped to be a jumpstart for the NHL in Atlanta; it wasn’t.)

The return of the NHL to playing under the warmth of the Olympic flame — corny, but anyone who has attended an Olympics knows it’s true — was going to be a highlight of the Beijing Games.

The patchwork rosters tournament at PyeongChang, South Korea in 2018 was intriguing, but nowhere near as entertaining as when it largely was an NHL tournament in 1998 (Nagano), 2002 (Salt Lake City), 2006 (Torino), 2010 (Vancouver), and 2014 (Sochi).

Part of the fun for NHL players potentially was trying to enjoy the Olympic experience away from the rink, but under the foreseeable circumstances for Beijing, that wasn’t going to be possible. Even if they went.

It’s just too bad.

Terry Frei (terry@terryfrei.com) is a Denver-based author and journalist. He has been named a state’s sports writer of the year seven times in peer voting — four times in Colorado and three times in Oregon. His seven books include the novels “Olympic Affair” and “The Witch’s Season.” Among his five non-fiction works are “Horns, Hogs, and Nixon Coming,” “Third Down and a War to Go,” “March 1939: Before the Madness,” and “’77: Denver, the Broncos, and a Coming of Age.” He also collaborated with Adrian Dater on “Save By Roy,” was a long-time vice president of the Professional Hockey Writers Association and has covered the hockey Rockies, Avalanche and the NHL at-large. His web site is www.terryfrei.com and his bio is available at www.terryfrei.com/bio.html

His Colorado Hockey Now column archive can be accessed here.