NHL would be foolish not to let players compete in 2014 Olympics

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Ilya Kovalchuk is Russian, so he understandably is biased.

The new Jersey Devils’ left wing is sure hoping, however, that the NHL will allow its players to compete again in the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

“I hope everybody is going to go again because it’s a huge event,” Kovalchuk, a three-time Olympian said Monday after returning from Vancouver. “The fans get excited. In Canada, hockey is the No. 1 sport and in Russia it’s the same thing.”

Maybe it would be too much to hope for the “same thing” out of the men’s ice hockey tournament in Sochi as we got from Vancouver over the last two weeks, but the NHL would be foolish not to try. the ending seemed like it had been scripted: NHL poster boy Sidney Crosby scoring in overtime to give Canada the Olympic gold medal it coveted the most.

It was a dramatic ending to a perfect display of everything that is great about the sport. an average of 27.6 million viewers saw it in the U.S., making it the most-watched hockey game in the country since 1980.

Consider that the game drew more viewers than any of the games in the 2009 World Series between the Yankees and the Phillies and more than any of the games in the 2009 NBA Finals. it also had better ratings than the 2010 Grammys, the Daytona 500, the Rose Bowl, the NCAA basketball title game and the final round of the 2009 Masters.

And, somehow, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman isn’t sure if it’s worth it for the league to shut down for two weeks again in 2014.

Part of it is logistical. the eight-hour time difference means the games will be played in early morning in the U.S.

That’s a legitimate concern, but there’s more to it than that.

The NHL’s collective bargaining agreement expires at the end of the 2010-11 season and, though it will not be a major part of the negotiations, it will be a tool that Bettman and the owners can use. the players love playing in the Olympics and Bettman knows that.

Another factor is the lack of a transfer agreement between the NHL and Russia’s Kontinental Hockey League. There is nothing preventing the KHL from poaching players who are under contract with NHL teams or even talking about offering them big money before their deals in North America expire.

The president of the KHL, Alexander Medvedev, did just that on Saturday by saying that SKA St. Petersburg — a team he is linked to — will offer Kovalchuk more money than any NHL team is allowed under its salary cap system. (Kovalchuk called it “just rumors.”)

Bettman and the NHL owners know that Russia wants its best players — Alex Ovechkin, Alexander Semin, Kovalchuk — to play for the host country in 2014 and will try to use that as leverage to work out a transfer agreement.

Bettman also might try to get some compensation from NBC for using the league’s players free of charge to help boost their ratings.

In the end, however, Bettman has to realize that his league benefited greatly from what happened over the past two weeks in Vancouver. People who never would consider watching hockey in the U.S. were talking about it Monday.

They embraced goaltender Ryan Miller and the Devils’ Zach Parise, who seemed to score nearly every big goal for Team USA. many of us will never forget those tense final minutes of regulation Sunday, Parise’s dramatic tying goal and Crosby’s OT winner.

NHL would be foolish not to let players compete in 2014 Olympics