By Amy Tennery<\/p>\n
NEW YORK (Reuters) -The NHL is embracing international competition to build new global talent, Commissioner Gary Bettman said on Thursday, as the league makes its highly anticipated return to the Olympics next year.<\/p>\n
The NHL ended a run of participation in five consecutive Winter Games in 2018 over a reluctance to interrupt its regular season and send valuable players into a tournament where they risked injury.<\/p>\n
But the top-flight North American league finalised plans in July to send their players to the Olympics in Milano-Cortina, amid a renewed focus on international competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to continue to encourage the development and growth and interest of hockey players throughout the world, particularly Northern Europe,\u201d said Bettman, who estimated that some 30% of the league\u2019s players come from outside North America.<\/p>\n
The NHL replaced its 2025 All-Star Game with an international tournament, the hugely successful 4 Nations Face-Off, and plans to host another international event in 2026, as well.<\/p>\n
The politically charged 4 Nations final between the United States and Canada delivered a record 9.3 million viewers on ESPN.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur numbers were astounding in terms of the number of people that were watching,\u201d said Bettman, who was speaking at the Columbia University Sports Management Conference.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe hockey was that good and the geopolitical overlay made it even more compelling.\u201d<\/p>\n
The NHL had intended to allow its players to compete in Beijing in 2022 but pulled out after the COVID-19 pandemic played havoc on its schedule, disappointing both players and fans.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur players have a history and tradition growing up representing their countries in international competition,\u201d said Bettman.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe stopped going to the Olympics but we\u2019re going back because it\u2019s important to our players to participate in the best on best.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Amy Tennery NEW YORK (Reuters) -The NHL is embracing international competition to build new global talent, Commissioner…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218891,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-218890","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218890"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218890\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218891"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218890"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218890"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}