Beijing 2022: Covid-19, China politics among issues presenting a challenge for NHL players heading to the Games

National Hockey League players taking part in the 2022 Winter Olympics in China would be a cherry on top for a nation eager to impress on an international stage
Issues including marketing rights, politics and Covid-19 protocols are making negotiations as complicated as they have ever been

Patrick Blennerhassett

Published: 10:00pm, 15 Aug 2021

Why you can trust SCMP

One of the National Hockey League’s most connected members of the media is ESPN’s Greg Wyshynski. Along with Canadian Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet, if you want insider information on anything related to ice hockey, go to one or the other and you can quickly find out what’s up.

Which is why the decision around sending players to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing in so perplexing as the two have been reporting competing information for months. On July 20, Wyshynski indicated the NHL was going to schedule in a break for the Olympics in February, but that player participation was “not yet guaranteed”. The latest collective bargaining agreement between the NHL and the NHL Players’ Association extends through to the 2025-26 season and tentatively pencils in the players heading to Beijing, and Milano Cortina in 2026.

NHL players love going to the Olympics, but team owners and the league would rather not take the risk as the Games bring a number of challenges, which includes everything from lost revenue and injuries to insurance and the logistical nightmare of letting well over 150 employees take a month long break to become unpaid freelancers.

Hence the NHL relaunching the World Cup of Hockey in 2016 after a 12-year hiatus, which took place before the regular season started in October, and held its last two editions in Toronto. And while every hockey fan watched every minute of that tournament, having teams like “North America” and “Europe” gave the whole thing a homogenised feel while the Olympics still brings a serious kick of prestige and historical significance.

Wyshynski’s comment, which came on the heels of the biggest news on the Olympics front in close to a year, was about 10 days after Friedman reported on his regular blog that NHL commissioner Gary Bettman had “real concerns” about whether they were going to allow the players to go.

Alexander Ovechkin has long wanted to win gold for Russia. Will he get that chance in China? Photo: AFP

The NHL did release a schedule with an Olympic break in it, but also indicated there was a second provisional schedule in the chamber. This is a nightmare for team owners who want to start selling season tickets. If the Summer Olympics fell in the middle of the National Basketball Association, we would most likely have never seen the likes of Michael Jordan, LeBron James and Kevin Durant playing for the red, white and blue. However country pride in ice hockey is much higher, and there is greater parity which always makes for entertaining tournaments.

What can Beijing 2022 learn from Tokyo 2020?

The NHL taking part in the Olympics has never been easy, and has got more complicated since it first got involved in 1998, coming to a head for 2018 in Korea when the NHL and its players opted out as a slew of deals could not be hammered out, ending a five-Games streak that started in Nagano, Japan.

The latest from Wyshynski is the NHL and the International Olympic Committee have been unable to agree on an expanded media rights deal. Friedman reported the NHL Players’ Association canvased its players after Bettman’s comments before this latest wrinkle, and it was an emphatic yes they wanted to head to China and represent their respective homelands. Counting points in this back and forth matter is clearly disorientating, even to NHL insiders.

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What can Beijing 2022 learn from the pandemic-delayed Tokyo 2020 Olympics?

One of the biggest issues on this laundry list is the amount of organisations involved. There is the NHL, the NHLPA, the IOC and the International Ice Hockey Federation, which oversees the game globally. Just getting two of these bodies to the table is hard, and we have to remember, these are millionaire athletes we’re talking about who are expensive to insure, move around and accommodate.

On top of this is the political controversy surrounding Beijing 2022. China is dealing with a growing boycott push from Western politicians around the alleged human rights abuses against the Uygur Muslims in the Western region of Xinjiang. Throw in the ongoing origin theory concerning Covid-19 and a Wuhan lab, and Hong Kong’s national security law, and you get a tense geopolitical atmosphere like we haven’t seen in decades when it comes to the host country.

Three of the teams expected to challenge for a gold medal, favourites Canada, the United States and Sweden, will be 100 per cent full of NHL talent. These three nations also find themselves at an all-time low in terms of relations with China. Canada is embroiled in the ongoing Meng Wanzhou saga, as Canadian Michael Spavor’s recent 11-year prison sentence for espionage further inflamed relations between the two countries.

The geopolitical feud between China and the US needs little explaining as it has now dragged into its second presidency. Sweden has been one of the Communist Party’s most outspoken detractors when it comes to European Union nations.

Multiple young stars like Canadian Cale Makar haven’t even got a chance to play in the Olympics yet. Photo: AP

The potentially disastrous cherry on top of all this is Covid-19, the Delta variant, and the safety of sending foreigners into a country known for strict lockdowns at a moment’s notice. Protocols are expected to be even tighter than they were for Tokyo 2020. To say this is a perfect storm of controversy waiting to happen would be an understatement.

But as Wyshynski said on a podcast just a few days ago, despite all of this, he still believe NHL players “will totally go”, given winning gold for your country is second only to winning the Stanley Cup.

Canadian helps China cultivate ice hockey as Beijing 2022 nears

All the regular issues surrounding NHL players heading to the Olympics became too much and they stayed home four years ago because a number of provisional agreements could not be signed-off in time. Sending superstars like Sidney Crosby and Alexander Ovechkin to Korea proved too much, and now we find ourselves in an even more complicated situation.

China, Covid-19 and a number of other challenges stand in the way of Beijing 2022 nabbing its showpiece event, and it looks like if this deal does get done, it will be nothing short of a miracle on ice.

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