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Friday, August 20, 2010
NHL v IOC
Great piece by Tyler. I just want to focus on this little thing:
What’s to stop the players from organizing a sixteen team international tournament, with the money divided up amongst the players who participate, in August of every fourth year?
This is essentially the Canada Cup / World Cup, right? The only thing stopping the players is if they have a contract as per CBA that precludes them from playing without consent of the NHL. Which I guess is the case.
And so, they are precluded from Olympics without consent of the NHL.
Which means, the NHL needs to get paid. They get their fair share from the Canada/World Cup. They get likely very little from the IOC, which is their problem. But, their problem also is that the players will put pressure on the NHL to allow Olympic participation, to the (monetary) benefit of the IOC.