Quote:
Originally Posted by Locke
I dont think thats true at all.
When the IOC/IIHF covered Lodging, Travel and Insurance it was a crappy deal for the NHL, when they abandoned that and told the NHL to pay for it themselves its easy to see why the League told them to pound sand.
They thought they could away with raking the NHL over the coals, when the League called their bluff they reverted back to the original terrible deal and by then it was too late.
It has little to do with 'hardship' its just not enough payoff in regards to the risk.
Go and look at those Olympic teams and add up the NHL Salaries, they're enormous.
I think it was really easy for the NHL to walk away from these Olympics.
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But then why would the league have offered participation at all? Despite all the issues with the IOC and IIHF, the NHL still voluntarily offered to agree to allow the players to participate if they extended the CBA. This to me suggests the league is nowhere near as opposed to Olympic participation as they claim to be. All of the risks and costs associated with participation would have remained, it could easily be argued that the league would have put themselves in an even worse position to negotiate a better deal from the IOC since they would not have had the option of not allowing their players to participate.
Bottom line is participating would have had all the same risks, the only thing that would have changed would have been that the CBA would be expiring 3 years later. The league would have no additional benefit or gain from the Olympics.