The NHL will be absent from the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing due to rising COVID-19 cases and rampant game postponements across the league.
On Tuesday, sources confirmed to USA Today that the NHL will miss its second straight Winter Olympics as the league has withdrawn its participation in the 2022 Beijing Games. This news comes off the mass of game postponements due to the latest COVID wave hitting not just the NHL, but sports leagues as a whole.
Back in September, the NHL and its players greenlit the league’s participation in the upcoming Winter Games, on the condition that as long as COVID-19 did not majorly impact the league’s schedule However, now that 50 games have been postponed as of Tuesday evening, the NHL had no choice but to pull the plug on Olympic participation.
#NHL Covid-19 (as of Dec. 21, 1pm ET)
131 players reported in active protocol (18% of rosters)
⬆️ 12 players over 24 hrs, incl. 7 players cleared
24 teams w/ at least 1 player in protocol
50 games postponed (45 in last 8 days)
1 game scheduled until Dec. 27 (TBL/VGK in jeopardy)— Frank Seravalli (@frank_seravalli) December 21, 2021
Since the rise of COVID cases and game postponements over the last week and a half, it’s no surprise that the NHL has withdrawn from the Olympics. The league wants each team to play a full 82-game schedule and with the three-week break in February that was supposed to be used for the Olympics — and the upcoming All-Star Game in Las Vegas — the league may look to reschedule games during that block.
Still, this will be the second straight Olympics the NHL will miss, with their last coming in Sochi in 2014 after skipping the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang. Even though this is the right decision for the league and its players, here’s how the hockey world reacted to the news.