Miami (AFP) – NHL officials said Tuesday they are nearing a deal with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) on sending players to the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina, Italy. Speaking at the end of two days of team owners meetings in South Florida, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly shared that the league is in regular talks with the IOC and IIHF. “We’re getting close,” Daly was also reported as saying in an article on the league’s website. “We exchanged some more documents with the IOC and IIHF on Friday. I remain confident we’ll get there soon.”
The NHL was pleased with a recent update on Olympic hockey arena construction. “They still are on track for an October completion and they want to have a test event in December,” Daly said. The NHL said last February that players would compete in Italy, pending a deal with the IIHF and IOC, and it plans to start a regular rotation of Olympic and World Cup of Hockey events for NHL talent. NHL players have not competed in the Olympics since 2014 at Sochi. The league could not reach a deal with the IIHF and IOC for the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and skipped the 2022 Beijing Olympics due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
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NHL players also took part in the Olympics at Nagano in 1998, Salt Lake City in 2002, Turin in 2006, and Vancouver in 2010. The Four Nations Face-Off next February in Montreal and Boston will feature NHL players competing for Canada, the United States, Finland, and Sweden and serve as a warm-up to resuming the World Cup in 2028. The World Cup of Hockey was last contested in 2016 at Toronto. NHL team owners head an update on talks with the IIHF on the World Cup this week but there is no timetable to announce such an event in 2028. “We had intensive discussions with them during the World Championships. We’ve updated those discussions over time,” Daly said. “We had a meeting with the IIHF in November in Toronto and expect to hear more back from them sometime hopefully before the end of the calendar year.”
Daly also said the league is projecting $6.6 billion in revenue for this season.
– New salary cap –
NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said next season’s salary cap is projected to be $92.4 million — up from $88 million this season — but could go slightly higher pending talks with the NHL Players’ Association. “The cap under the current guidelines in the Collective Bargaining Agreement would go up 5 percent. As we look at revenues, we’re going to have discussions with the Players’ Association about escrow levels and whether or not the cap can or should be tweaked a little more on an ongoing basis,” Bettman said.
The NHL and NHLPA met last week as part of ongoing talks ahead of formal negotiations to begin in February on a new collective bargaining agreement. The current deal expires in September 2026, but Bettman has said he hopes to have a new deal in 2025, possibly before the Stanley Cup Final. “We’re not going to get ahead of ourselves and prognosticate as to what’s going to happen, although we hope to do this as quickly and as seamlessly as possible,” Bettman said.
© 2024 AFP
