Mark Madden: Amid covid chaos, NHL should keep players away from Beijing Winter Olympics

The NHL is embroiled in covid chaos.

Calgary and Carolina experienced recent postponements because of team outbreaks. Covid has caused 10 NHL games to be pushed back this season.

More will follow. Covid isn’t going away.

The NHL may shuffle its protocol. Some want a pause in play, but that’s overreacting: Ten games postponed so far this season is a drop in the bucket.

What the NHL shouldn’t do is send its stars to the other side of the globe to play hockey in China.

But the NHL plans to do that anyway: Commissioner Gary Bettman says the players will decide whether they participate in the Beijing Winter Olympics this coming February.

Commitment may be wavering: Olympics covid protocol reportedly calls for a three-to-five-week quarantine for those testing positive. Edmonton’s Connor McDavid called that prospect “unsettling.” If McDavid and a few other select stars pull out, dominoes might fall. (Sidney Crosby already has two Olympics gold medals. Stay home, Sid.)

The NHL must do what it should have done years ago: replace Olympics participation with a World Cup of Hockey tournament every four years. Keep the timetable exact and regular. Have it just prior to the NHL season. Play it in North America every time.

There have been three World Cup of Hockey tournaments to date: 1996, 2004, 2016. (That timetable is neither exact nor regular.) The tournament’s lineage can be traced to the Canada Cup, which was held in 1976, 1981, 1984, 1987 and 1991.

The World Cup of Hockey should be the game’s only significant international option. Ditch the carny European team and 23-and-under North American squad that played in ’16. National teams only. Run it just like the Olympics.

The upcoming Winter Olympics are in China. The prior Winter Games were in South Korea. The ones before that were in Russia. Not exactly conducive to prime-time TV in North America. A World Cup of Hockey in North America super-serves television in the U.S. and Canada.

Soccer’s World Cup means infinitely more than soccer in the Olympics. That’s because FIFA, soccer’s governing body, forces it to be so.

The NHL controls hockey. The NHL calls the shots. The NHL pays the players.

International sports are a huge con.

Professional teams send their assets to play for national teams with all risk being assumed by the pro teams. If Crosby gets hurt playing for Canada, the Pittsburgh Penguins absorb most of the damage and still are obligated to pay Crosby.

Sending players to the Olympics has done the NHL zero tangible good. The league’s TV ratings don’t spike when play resumes after the Olympics. They stay the same. There’s little proof Olympics hockey is widely seen as connected to the NHL.

The players want to compete in the Olympics. They want to represent their countries. The World Cup of Hockey provides a viable option. (So does joining the military.)

The NHL needs to do what’s best for the NHL. Putting star players at risk and interrupting its season for three weeks isn’t it.

The glory of international hockey isn’t what it was before the Soviet Union disbanded. Now all the top Russian players are in the NHL. When Canada pros first played Soviet “amateurs” in 1972, it had legit intrigue. Phil Esposito vs. Valeri Kharmalov. Ken Dryden vs. Vladislav Tretiak. Those matchups never had taken place.

By contrast, Sidney Crosby has gone head-to-head vs. Alex Ovechkin in 61 regular-season NHL games and four Stanley Cup playoff series. International hockey is just more of the same.

Hockey has no “evil empire” anymore. It never did.

The late Herb Brooks coached the 1980 “Miracle on Ice” USA team. The medal-round defeat of the Soviets may be the biggest upset in sports history. Brooks would chuckle at descriptions like “morality play on ice,” always concluding, “It was a hockey tournament.”

The NHL should ditch the too-much-trouble romance of the Olympics and muscle up on the World Cup of Hockey. Take control.