NHL boss: No decision on Sochi 2014 04/03/2010 |
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The National Hockey League (NHL) has still not decided whether to allow its players to take part in the next Winter Games despite the massive TV audience that watched last weekend’s Olympic final between the US and Canada, its commissioner has revealed.
Gary Bettman said that the 27.6 million people who watched the match – the most for a hockey game since the US defeated Finland in the Olympic final in 1980 – was the NHL’s reward for halting its season so that players could compete for their countries.
“This is the payoff that we will see from this year – a huge audience,” Bettman told Bloomberg Television. “It’s a balancing act.
“People should not infer one way or the other whether or not we are going [to Sochi for the 2014 Games] by virtue of the fact that we have not made a decision. In Salt Lake City in 2002, we had not committed to Torino [which staged the 2006 Winter Olympics].”
Since the 1998 Nagano Games, the NHL has taken a midseason break to allow its players to participate in the Olympics.
The NHL committed more than 140 players with contracts valued in excess of $2bn to the Olympic tournament in Vancouver
“We will get together and reason this out,” Bettman said. “We need more control over what goes on.”
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