New York Rangers goaltender Henrik Lundqvist came home from an “Awesome” Sochi Olympics with a silver medal. New York Islanders captain John Tavares returned with a season-ending knee injury.
The different Olympic outcomes for the NHL All-Stars illustrates the debate on whether the league’s players should continue to participate. Proponents say it boosts the league’s visibility and that players love it. Opponents, including some club owners, argue that it is bad business and risks players’ health.
NHL players not attending would hurt the business of the Olympics and Comcast Corp’s NBC network, which in June 2011 agreed to pay US$4.38 billion to retain US television rights to the Games through 2020, but would not affect the league, said Brad Adgate, director of research for New York-based media-buying agency Horizon Media Inc.
“There’s no halo effect,” Adgate said in a telephone interview. “It’s not like suddenly 25-plus million people watched this, so we’ll have 25-plus million people watch the Stanley Cup Finals. That hasn’t happened.”
The league and players union together have to agree on whether it will participate. NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said last week at a Sochi news conference that a decision on the 2018 Pyeongchang Games in South Korea could come in the next six months.
NHL Players’ Association head Don Fehr said he had no timetable for a decision.
The Olympic sport is popular with television viewers. Canada’s overtime victory over the US in the gold medal game four years ago in Vancouver was watched by an average of 27.6 million, the most-watched hockey broadcast since 1980.
Lundqvist, who led the Swedish team to the gold medal at the 2006 Turin Games, said he told Fehr last week in Sochi that “I love everything about the Olympics,” and that continued participation is the obvious choice.
“It’s a no-brainer,” Lundqvist said in an interview a day before Sweden lost to Canada in the gold-medal game. “This is so important for the good of hockey and the league. A lot of new fans watch the games here, and we’re going to Asia next time, so it’s a whole new market.”
Tavares, the No. 1 pick in the 2009 NHL Draft, tore the medial collateral ligament and meniscus in his left knee during Canada’s quarter-final victory over Latvia. The 23-year-old forward was ranked third in the NHL with 66 points heading into the Olympics.
“Obviously you can’t replace a guy like him, but I think everyone is going to get an opportunity to pick up the slack,” Islanders forward Colin McDonald said. “Hopefully guys are looking forward to it.”
Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Paul Martin broke his hand during the US team’s quarter-final win over the Czech Republic. He is set to miss four to six weeks, the team said on Tuesday on Twitter.
NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly told reporters in Sochi that having the league’s players at the Olympics is good for the sport’s visibility, but added that NHL ticket sales and television ratings have not increased after past Olympics.
“It’s a practical business matter, for the clubs individually, the Olympics have no tangible positive effect,” Daly said.
Allan Walsh, whose Octagon sports agency represents 23 of the 148 NHL players who went to Sochi, said all of his clients support staying in the Olympics and that the league benefits from the global coverage of Olympic hockey on television and social media.
He cited the preliminary-round matchup in Sochi between the US and Russia, won by the US in a shootout, which “Dominated sports and Olympic coverage for 48 hours.”
“Every second of national broadcast coverage of Olympic hockey is a glorified television commercial for the NHL’s product internationally,” Walsh said in a telephone interview.
“Ticket prices can only be raised so much, you can only have so many outdoor games in a season,” he said. “Really, the future of the game is international.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier