BREAKING NEWS: Bettman is an idiot

The NHL has announced that they will not be participating in the 2018 Winter Olympics. They’ve released this statement on the matter:

We have previously made clear that while the overwhelming majority of our clubs are adamantly opposed to disrupting the 2017-18 NHL season for purposes of accommodating Olympic participation by some NHL players, we were open to hearing from any of the other parties who might have an interest in the issue (e.g., the IOC, the IIHF, the NHLPA, etc.) as to reasons the Board of Governors might be interested in re-evaluating their strongly held views on the subject. A number of months have now passed and no meaningful dialogue has materialized. Instead, the IOC has now expressed the position that the NHL’s participation in Beijing in 2022 is conditioned on our participation in South Korea in 2018. And the NHLPA has now publicly confirmed that it has no interest or intention of engaging in any discussion that might make Olympic participation more attractive to the clubs. As a result, and in an effort to create clarity among conflicting reports and erroneous speculation, this will confirm our intention to proceed with finalizing our 2017-18 regular season schedule without any break to accommodate the Olympic Winter Games. We now consider the matter officially closed.

It’s been met with staunch public outcry, and many players expressed their intention to participate in the games prior to this announcement. Jonathan Toews admitted that not allowing NHL players in the games  is “misrepresenting our sport on a pretty huge scale”. So far, Henrik Lundqvist is the most high profile player to release a statement since the announcement:

hank

For once, I agree with  ex-NHLer Brandon Prust

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