In 2002, I was in a Georgia hotel room, sitting on the end of the bed, when Mario Lemieux dummied a pass between his legs onto the stick of Paul Kariya for a goal.
They were built this way to accommodate the expected crush of interest in a tournament featuring players like Connor McDavid, Alex Ovechkin and Auston Matthews.
In 2018, the NHL — which is to say, the team owners for whom commissioner Gary Bettman works — decided to skip Pyeongchang, deciding that the disruption to its business wasn’t worth the payoff of a tournament halfway around the world.
While hockey fans were incredulous that the NHL might forego a chance to let its foremost stars play in front of a rare worldwide audience, the commissioner insisted that IOC’s refusal to let the NHL be a partner in the event meant the league couldn’t even get the benefit of, for example, highlights on its own website.
Instead, the league has to contort itself every four years to squeeze in an Olympic break, unless it decides not to go and leaves the national programs casting about for Spengler Cup-type rosters.
Hockey fans quite enjoy the World Cup when it happens, but it has seemed unnecessary when NHL players are already competing at the Olympics, and it hasn’t helped that it only seems to be held at utterly random times and with one-off rules like Team North America and Team Europe But Not The Good Europeans.
And what of the under-23 players who are already good enough to be in the NHL? As is the case with soccer and the Olympics, their clubs could decide whether a chance to play in an elite international tournament is worth loaning them out for developmental purposes.
Paul Henderson’s goal at the Summit Series in 1972 that, all these years later, is less of a sporting event and more of an instance of nation-building lore.
Whether you’re a Rams or Bengals fan, or just a fan of the snacks and halftime show, we have some fun ideas to make the most of the sporting event that makes us all learn Roman numerals.
It may not be a passport to love, per se, but if you play your cards right a card is a sweet way to show someone you care.
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