NHL players to return to Winter Olympics for 2026 and 2030
NHL players return to the Olympics for the first time in more than a decade.
The world’s top hockey league will allow its players to participate in the Milan 2026 and 2030 Games under an agreement announced Friday by the NHL, the NHL Players’ Association, the International Ice Hockey Federation and the IOC .
NHL players have not been to the Olympics since 2014 in Sochi.
“We know how important international competition is to our players,” said NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman.
“We made it,” added IIHF president Luc Tardif. “That is two years of work and has been more intensive in the past six months.”
Milan, barring any other unforeseen circumstance such as the pandemic forcing players to miss Beijing in 2022, will be the first Olympic opportunity for a generation of stars led by Canadians Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar and Americans Auston Matthews , Jack Eichel and Adam. Fox. It could put McDavid, Sidney Crosby and Connor Bedard on the same team in a tournament with a gold medal on the line.
“I really want to compete in the Olympics,” McDavid said Thursday. “I had high hopes for that. I think everyone knows where I stand. … All these guys who haven’t had a chance to represent their country in the best way, I think that’s something we all long for.
The NHL paused its Olympic season five times from 1998 through 2014, and most of the players now in the league grew up expecting to play on that stage. Disagreements over who would pay for insurance and travel expenses, and the time difference between South Korea and North America, were cited as factors in the NHL passing on Pyeongchang in 2018.
Pandemic-related scheduling issues have scuttled plans to send players to Beijing. Last fall, U.S. defenseman Charlie McAvoy said he was still angry about not being able to play in the 2022 Olympics.
“It took a while for it to go away,” McAvoy said. “You choose the sizes for your Ralph Lauren outfit to walk around during the opening ceremony. That stuff became real. It really got real. And you internalize it. It works as motivation. You want to be part of that, and then you lose it in a few seconds.”
The upcoming international calendar is also expected to include a four-nation tournament next year involving the US, Canada, Sweden and Finland.
Hockey hasn’t had an international “best vs. best” competition since the 2016 World Cup, when McDavid, MacKinnon, Matthews and Eichel played under Team North America — not Canada or the US — at age 23. There hasn’t been a World Cup since, with Russia’s war in Ukraine contributing to our inability to organize something that would have been played this month.
Finally, the Olympic Games are back on the schedule for the world’s top players.
“For years, players have embraced the opportunity to compete for Olympic gold,” said NHLPA Executive Director Marty Walsh. “We are pleased that today’s announcement makes it a certainty for our members to participate in the 2026 and 2030 Winter Olympics.”
McDavid, a three-time NHL MVP and widely considered the best hockey player in the world, is one of the most outspoken players pushing for an Olympic return.
“I feel like it’s super important that hockey comes back,” McDavid said. “Talking about growing the game, doing all these things well, you have to have the best of the best, playing on the biggest stage in the sport, and that is the Olympics.”
The international mini-tournament that will take place a year from now – a tournament that excludes the German Leon Draisaitl, the Czech David Pastrnak, the Swiss Roman Josi and all the Russian players – could serve as a kind of Olympic preview for the United States, Canada , Sweden and other countries. Finland.
It remains to be seen whether Russia will be allowed to participate in 2026. The IOC allows individual athletes from the country to compete under a neutral flag but banned Russians from team competitions at the 2024 Games in Paris.
The Russians – playing like the Olympic athletes from Russia – took home Olympic gold in 2018 with a stacked roster that included former Detroit Red Wings winger Pavel Datsyuk and current Minnesota Wild All-Star Kirill Kaprizov. Finland is now the defending champion after winning in Beijing.
“It has always been my dream and my goal to one day play in the Olympic Games,” said Sebastian Aho of Finland. “I grew up with them on the junior national team, so it would be really special to try a tournament with those guys and play hockey when it’s at its best.”