Last summers cup to me gave a strong feeling that the NHL just doesn't
get the appeal of international hockey. The whole thing just never had the right vibe around it. Everything about the marketing screamed "gimmick" to me, even excluding the gimmicky teams. That gives me serious doubts that they'll ever manage to build the kind of international prestige that best-on-best tournaments in other sports have.
Of course all they need is to find someone with the right vision and understanding, but the NHL marketing has
never seemed very competent to me, even when they sell their own product. It's very rare for me to see an NHL ad and think "man I want to see that" and it really isn't that hard to get me excited about hockey
The IOC might be a corrupt monster, but they understand their product.