Moscow: The NHL may be nearing a deadline to decide whether to allow the world’s best hockey players to participate in the Winter Olympics next year in South Korea.
“I hope we can find a compromise in the next two or three weeks,” International Ice Hockey Federation President Rene Fasel told The Associated Press on Thursday in a telephone interview. “We need to know by the end of April if they’re coming, or not.”
Fasel said leaders of national teams, including those in Canada and Russia, have recently told him they need to know next month if it is time for them to assemble their Plan B rosters.
NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has made it clear league owners don’t want to stop their season for three weeks again and put their stars at risk of injury without what they would consider a tangible return. The reluctance has come up in the past and yet the NHL has participated in every Winter Olympics since 1998.
This time, however, there seems to be an impasse.
— AP
