IIHF president Luc Tardif, right and Pat Kelleher, executive director USA Hockey, address the media at the IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship in Gothenburg, Sweden, Friday, Jan. 5, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Christinne Muschi
GOTHENBURG, Sweden – Luc Tardif started to smirk as the question was posed.
It’s one the International Ice Hockey Federation president has answered over and over.
Where do things stand when it comes to the NHL’s participation at the 2026 Olympics?
The puck still isn’t quite over the line.
Tardif, however, believes a deal is close with all the key participants – the NHL, the NHL Players’ Association and the International Olympic Committee – on the same page.
“If you can see, I’m smiling,” Tardif said Friday at the world junior hockey championship closing press conference. “Now all the planets are at the good place.”
The Canadian-born executive has a meeting scheduled with IOC president Thomas Bach in mid-January before another slate of conversations with the NHL and NHLPA at the league’s all-star game in Toronto.
A final decision is expected at the IIHF Congress in the middle of February. That would allow two years of preparation ahead of the sport’s top talent returning to the world stage at the Milan-Cortina Games in Italy.
The NHL participated at five Olympics between 1998 and 2014, but skipped the event in 2018 for financial reasons. The league was set to go to Beijing in 2022 before pulling the plug due to COVID-19 concerns.
The core issues between the NHL, NHLPA, IOC and IIHF have always boiled down to one thing – money – with insurance, licensing and travel costs all included in negotiations.
Hockey’s stars have made it clear they want to go back to the Olympics – both to compete for their countries and help grow the game globally. The league promised to do all it could to make that happen when the collective bargaining agreement was extended in July 2020.
Hockey hasn’t seen a best-on-best men’s tournament since the 2014 Games, with the likes of Connor McDavid, Auston Matthews and Nathan MacKinnon having all missed out to date.
Tardif added he’s confident the Olympic venue will be ready in time for 2026 after NHL commissioner Gary Bettman voiced concerns in December.
The IIHF chief also spoke about getting all leagues and federations on side to establish one hockey calendar for the next decade.
The NHL is planning a scaled-back World Cup – mainly because of Russia’s exclusion due to the country’s continued war in Ukraine – in 2025. The IIHF, meanwhile, holds its annual men’s world championship during the NHL playoffs.
“We have to sit down together and try to see what can be the long-term schedule in the next 10 years, including a potential World Cup, the Olympic Games,” Tardif said. “How we can bring the best-on-best players for this competition?”
He said the NHL and IIHF need to work together.
“If we want to organize a World Cup without the NHL, that’s not gonna work,” he said. “If the NHL wants to organize a World Cup without us, that’s not gonna work. If we’re together without European leagues, that’s not going to work. The success of the (2026) Olympic Games, I hope, will be the start of a new way to think about the international schedule.
“We’ve got the same goal – grow the game. I like the way we start to do work at different levels. We have to continue because I think that’s the future. We’re talking about the future of ice hockey, internationally.”
Tardif also has his eye on the 2030 Olympics as negotiations continue for Milan-Cortina.
“I said to myself, ‘If we made a deal for one, why not two Olympic cycles?” he said. “That’s the same work. And I think we will open the discussion.
“But we focus on (2026) and are optimistic.”
WORLD JUNIORS HEAD TO MINNY
USA Hockey announced Friday the 2026 world juniors – the event’s 50th anniversary – will be hosted by Minneapolis-St. Paul.
Warm-weather destinations were also considered, with Las Vegas and Tampa, Fla., among the rumoured potential landing spots, but U.S. officials chose the “State of Hockey” for its first home tournament since 2018 in Buffalo, N.Y.
HOCKEY CANADA
Tardif said he was glad to see some transitionary Hockey Canada board members stay on longer than their initial one-year term as the national sport organization looks to recover from a string of scandals.
Hockey Canada hired former Curling Canada head Katherine Henderson as its new president and CEO, while Jonathan Goldbloom replaced retired judge Hugh Fraser as board chair.
“We have to learn to work together,” Tardif said. “Optimistic about the new staff.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 5, 2024.
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