The NHL figuratively leaned back on the new union agreement that will be ratified by NHL players this weekend or early next week. Actually, if needed, homeowners may also have literally leaned back. The NHL owners have made legitimate concessions to the players in the past few weeks, making the 24-team NHL return to the game. As a result, we will likely see Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin fight for gold once again.
Yes, yes, technically, Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin could play until they’re almost 40 and older. And yes, if NHL players play at the 2026 Winter Olympics, Team Canada can add Sidney Crosby as a legacy, just like Team Canada did for Mario Lemieux in 2002. Crosby will be 34 years old. in 2022. Malkin will be 35.
But let’s be realistic. The 2022 Winter Olympics are an unexpected gift, perhaps the best or only gift that COVID-19 has given us (unless you have Amazon stock).
We are going to realize the silver, gold coatings, which has given us the new spirit of cooperation between owners and players. The new NHL CBA deal will allow Crosby and Malkin to meet again, as each remains a viable world-class star.
Probably for the last time too.
It doesn’t matter the 12-hour time difference between Beijing, where the games will be held, and it doesn’t matter that the NHL season 2021-22 closes for weeks as star players trek around the world to spread the gospel from hockey to a billion Chinese citizens (those who were not jailed or disappeared for sounding the alarm about COVID-19, anyway), and billions more on television.
NHL owners have opposed including players at the Winter Olympics. It has been done. The novelty for North American fans peaked. The NHL season has to stop for weeks, and owners don’t earn a dime from the Olympic rampage. In short, there was no benefit to owners beyond making players happy.
Players were upset, including Erik Karlsson, who fired an angry Tweet.
“Whoever made that decision obviously had no idea what they were doing,” Karlsson tweeted.
Even in 2010 and 2014, the team’s head coach for Canada, Mike Babcock, publicly expressed his disappointment.
“All I can say about it is that I’m disappointed,” Babcock said in 2017.
Owners held firm in 2018, and Russian NHL players like Malkin, for whom the gold medal is a childhood dream, saw their compatriots win Russia’s first gold since 1992.
The players complained and wanted to tackle Olympic participation by 2022 in the upcoming CBA talks, but their odds of winning that battle were not good. COVID-19 and the players who took 100% of the health risks to play again changed everything.
The owners had every reason to satisfy the players within 18 months so that the league could restart this month. NHLPA chief Donald Fehr is also likely to get hit with a stick for this one.
The Olympics will forever be a watershed moment in Sidney Crosby’s career. “Iggy!” Crosby yelled at more than 18,000 Canadian fans who wanted his country to win gold at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, just before Crosby received the pass from new Hockey Hall of Fame member Jarome Iginla and buried the shot behind US Team goalkeeper Ryan Miller.
“The Golden Goal” immediately drew Crosby to his country after a few years of fighting public criticism from hockey traditionalists who opposed Crosby’s complaints about the ice.
2022 Team Canada led by Crosby once again against Team Russia with Alex Ovechkin and Malkin, 36. Jack Eichel, the new captain of (insert team here), will lead the U.S. team.
Who knows who the 2022 hero will be. Things have changed dramatically in just a few months, it’s hard to imagine a return to normalcy. Perhaps the new swine flu, which is reported to have pandemic potential, will generate a strong dose of irony and shut down the games that hockey players won per player during this pandemic.
But Crosby v. Malkin once again. It is a good consolation for this crazy season.
