For the second time in a row, the hockey tournament of the Winter Olympics will be held without the best players in the world, it became officially known after the National Hockey League (NHL) on the non-release of hockey players at the four-year largest winter sports forum. At the Beijing Olympics, the Covid-19 protocol will be very strict, and it did not satisfy the leadership of the NHL, but now the national teams have to regroup in their composition, and the situation may not be the simplest for the hockey powers.
Already at the 2018 Pyongyang Olympics, the hockey tournament was without NHL stars. At the time, the NHL did not want to suspend its season to allow its hockey players to join the national teams, but this time the situation was complicated by Covid-19. In the NHL, just before Christmas, there was an outbreak of a new type of omicron in Covid-19, which forced the transfer of games. In the first half of this season, everything seemed to be making NHL hockey players able to compete in the Olympics, but the league’s leadership could change its mind until January 10th. Due to the epidemiological situation, the NHL did not hesitate to announce a decision that was not favorable to the hockey teams.
“It was very much to be expected. I would say there are two big key factors here. One is the current epidemiological situation in North America. We are seeing how many professional league games are being transferred there, including in the NHL. Seeing the intensity of these transferred games, it is clear that it will affect the NHL calendar. It was a decision to keep their league, “Delfi explained to Latvian Hockey Federation Secretary General Robert Mower. “The second factor was what players would do if they had a positive Covid-19 test in China. If there are still symptoms, the quarantine should be spent there in a hospital with regular testing, and in China the methods of testing are different, for example, if the test in Europe is already negative after the illness, it may still be positive there. that the NHL was not convinced, so in order not to risk contracts worth millions, such a decision was made, which is quite understandable. “
Even if there weren’t so many cases in the NHL today, the NHL leadership would have looked for other reasons not to release its hockey players. According to the mower, this outbreak of omicron put an end to “i” and made this decision quicker. “Everything went in the same direction so that the players would not go.”
Impact of the decision
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