BTW..thanks for the great job you did with these Olympics. It's appreciated.
1. The season-ending injury to the Islanders' John Tavares, the third-leading scorer in the NHL entering the Olympic break, illustrates a major problem for NHL teams with these tournaments. Most general managers in the NHL hate the Olympics for this reason.
2. The NHL's leadership isn't convinced that interrupting the NHL season for two weeks is a net positive for the league. Sure, they get a lot of exposure for hockey in general ... but there's no certainty that this translates to the bottom line of the NHL.
3. One big issue that's seen more discussion this year than in prior years is that the IOC and IIHF do not provide any concessions at all to the NHL. The NHL does not get any benefits from the Olympics in terms of licensing, promotional concessions, or anything of that sort. In fact, I believe the NHL wasn't even allowed to stream any video from the Olympics on its cable network or its website.
4. The 2018 Winter Olympics are going to be held in South Korea. As with these Sochi games, the time difference with North America is going to be something on the order of 6-12 hours (depending on your time zone). The lack of any live prime-time television coverage of medal round hockey games will diminish the interest of the NHL substantially. In terms of TV exposure, there's a huge difference between broadcasting a USA-Canada game from Vancouver or Salt Lake City and broadcasting it from Asia.
Keep in mind that Commissioner Bettman is a paid employee of the owners. And the owners have not liked the 3 week work stoppage while their paid employees go off and risk injury for free. The fact that he has not come out and said that they would be there in 2018 says a lot (IMHO)
But if the players revolt and push the issue, I believe he will decide in favor of good public relations. Then again, after the collapse of USA Hockey, some (like me) might be in favor of giving the amateurs a shot.
That