NHL players return to Winter Olympics

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It’s been a good week for fans of international hockey. First came the pulsating finish to the IIHF World Women’s Championship in Calgary, where Canada produced a stirring overtime victory over their arch rivals from USA. Today, the news that the best male players on the planet will join them at the upcoming Winter Olympics in Beijing from February 4-20, 2022.

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The agreement among the National Hockey League, the NHL Players Association, and the International Ice Hockey Federation was made official in an IIHF press release issued Friday morning.

So the question immediately turns to the central question: how will this affect the Edmonton Oilers?

I say that partly in jest, but also secure in the knowledge that there will be plenty of coverage of the bigger picture across a range of media. Here at the Cult of Hockey the focus of attention remains squarely on the locals.

Make no mistake, Oilers will be front and centre for two countries, implicit in this paragraph from the IIHF release:

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Seven NHL stars listed there, including two each from the two-time Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning and your Edmonton Oilers. Assuming good health, both McDavid and Draisaitl — the top two NHL scorers in each of the past two seasons — are slam dunks to make, and possibly even captain, their respective national teams. Both are veterans of the international scene, with McDavid having represented his country (or continent) in seven different tournaments, Draisaitl an amazing twelve.

Which other Oilers might join them overseas? Leading candidate is surely Darnell Nurse, a five-time representative of Team Canada.  My colleague David Staples made the early case for Nurse over a year ago, even before his considerable game emerged into the upper echelon during the most recent NHL campaign.

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Staples pointed out how Canada is much deeper on the right hand side, whereas:

Keith is of course an Oiler today, but I would rate his chances of representing Canada as remote. Which is just as well. A couple of weeks off what will be a packed NHL schedule will be helpful for the 38-year-old workhorse.

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I see only two other Oilers with a realistic shot at their respective national teams. Jesse Puljujarvi has a reasonable shot to make the Finnish national side, which may be largely dependent on his continued emergence during the opening months of the upcoming NHL season.

The other? Zach Hyman, who would be considered a long shot based on statistics but who is in with a shot given Canada’s long history of including a smattering of role players among the superstars that typically dominate the roster. One recent parallel might be Chris Kunitz, who rode shotgun on Sidney Crosby’s line so successfully in Pittsburgh that the Hockey Canada braintrust saw fit to keep him in that spot for the Sochi Olympics in 2014 in which Canada successfully defended their gold medal. The chemistry between Hyman and McDavid is both entirely unknown but extremely promising. Let’s give them some time as teammates before casting odds of Hyman’s participation, which for now I am comfortable putting somewhere in between 0% and 100%. It’s possible, let’s leave it there.

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Other than Draisaitl and Puljujarvi, the Oilers are currently at a low ebb of top-end European players. No more Oscar Klefbom, Adam Larsson, or Andrej Sekera to compete for spots on their respective national squads.

The NHL schedule has already been announced with an Olympic break built in. It’s not as wide a break as one might suppose; the Oilers for example are slated to play on Feb 02 (in Washington) and again on Feb 23 (in Tampa), which doesn’t leave a lot of time for travel to and from Beijing for the Feb 04-20 tournament. Bear in mind there will be the maximum 12 hours of jet lag in both directions as the Internatonal Olympic Committee in its ultimate wisdom as chosen to hold its third consecutive Games in Asia.

Indeed, the Oilers will play EIGHT consecutive road games, three before the Olympics, five after, while local ticket holders will have to cool their jets from Jan 27 to Mar 05 — over five weeks! That will represent the Oilers second 8-game roadie of the season, the other occurring during the season’s other big international tournament, the 2022 World Juniors to be hosted right here in Edmonton.

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It all adds up to a very tough schedule for the Oilers, especially for the 2-5 members of the team who will participate in Beijing. All NHL teams will face some variation of that difficult slate, of course. Ideally, the quality of hockey at the Olympic Games will be worth it.

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