Марти Уолш NHL-ийн тоглогчдыг 2030 оны олимпод оролцуулах тал дээр өөдрөг байна

MUNICH — Having already delivered on a critical part of his mandate by getting NHL players back to the Olympics earlier this year, Marty Walsh doesn’t think it will be a big challenge to keep them there.

The NHL Players’ Association’s executive director believes the experience in Milan-Cortina was so overwhelmingly positive that it will force all stakeholders to make things work when it comes time to hammer out an official deal for the 2030 Games in the French Alps.

The NHLPA already has a formal commitment from the NHL on participation in the next Winter Olympics as part of their 2025 memorandum of understanding, although the clause in that agreement notes it is “subject to negotiation of terms acceptable to each of the NHL, NHLPA, and IIHF (and/or IOC).”

In the past, those negotiations have broken down. The NHL skipped the 2018 Olympics after sending players to the five preceding Games, then pulled out of 2022 over COVID-19 concerns. But Walsh doesn’t think there’s any danger of a similar step back this time around.

“I would be shocked if the IOC and the IIHF didn’t understand that they need us in the Olympics, because the ratings were off the charts,” he told The Athletic during the NHL/NHLPA European player media tour. “The president of the IOC (Kirsty Coventry) mentioned in a comment about ‘The Olympics helps the NHL with ratings.’ Yeah, but the NHL helped the Olympics with ratings. Let’s not (kid) ourselves. I think 20-something million people watched the gold medal game.”

The official number in the United States was 18.6 million average live viewers on NBC and Peacock. In Canada, 8.7 million were tuned in to CBC at the game’s conclusion. And the U.S.-Canada men’s final saw the puck dropped just after 8 a.m. ET, prompting NHL commissioner Gary Bettman to later say that the ratings “would’ve been twice as high” with an afternoon start in North America.

For Walsh, the larger point is that all stakeholders have too much to lose if they can’t find agreement on the hospitality, ticketing, insurance and marketing details that go into the deal that formally delivers NHL players to the Olympics.

“We’ll get there,” he said. “I’m not worried about that. The agreement is not about players playing in the Olympics; the agreement is all the other stuff that goes with it. Like accommodations and all that stuff. I’m not worried about that.”

Growing the game internationally and establishing a robust calendar of international events are big priorities for Walsh, and it’s been one of the major successes during his tenure with the NHLPA.

Before he was officially hired in February 2023, he’d heard from Connor McDavid and a few other high-profile players about the importance of returning to the Olympics. Because of that, Walsh said that topic was broached in his first conversation with Bettman after taking the job, and their continued discussions eventually paved the way to Milan.

Previous union leaders had sought to establish a regular schedule of international tournaments for their membership and fallen short of actually making it happen. Walsh is making serious inroads. The wildly successful 4 Nations Face-Off happened on his watch in February 2025, and the NHLPA is now co-planning a revived World Cup of Hockey tournament with the NHL, scheduled for February 2028.

“We came up with an idea, a schedule,” Walsh said. “We didn’t have enough time to do a World Cup in ’24, so we did the 4 Nations — kind of a prelude into the Olympics and World Cup. So we had the 4 Nations, ’26 we had the Olympics — obviously that went well — ’28 we have the World Cup, and our intention is to be at the ’30 Olympics.”

Underpinning this new era of international hockey is a sense of harmony between the NHLPA and NHL. They’ve guaranteed labor peace through at least September 2030 with a new collective bargaining agreement taking effect next month, and the parties have established a stronger working relationship since Walsh was hired.

At one point during last week’s media tour in Munich, Walsh huddled with NHLPA and NHL staff as well as a couple of European-based marketers who were on site. The league and union have made a commitment to bring regular-season games to Germany for the next three years, starting with the Chicago Blackhawks and Ottawa Senators playing Dec. 18 and 20 in Düsseldorf, and that’s part of an increased focus on finding more inroads on a continent that produces roughly one-third of NHL players.

“I think you have real revenue opportunities, I think you have sponsorship opportunities and you have individual growth opportunities for players,” Walsh said. “Your home country might be Germany, but I think there’s opportunities for American and Canadian players as well. With social media, if you get more and more opportunities for broadcast TV here and getting games on TV, their personalities are going to come out. Some NBA players, like LeBron James, he’d walk down the street in Germany and they’d know who he is.

“We’re going to do the same thing for hockey. We have Macklin Celebrini and guys coming up. Connor McDavid, the best hockey player. There’s a lot of opportunities for players in the growth of the game.”

These are heady times for the world’s top hockey league.

A surging salary cap has sent the top salaries skyward after years of stagnation, and the new CBA brings with it some other significant changes for players. In exchange for giving the NHL an 84-game regular season, two more games than before, the NHLPA managed to eliminate fitness testing, shorten camps to just 13 days for players who appeared in 50 or more games the previous season and reduce the number of preseason games to four per team, with any player who has 100-plus NHL games limited to two.

They also eliminated the dress code, which Walsh sees as an important step for a league that needs to sell itself in new ways.

“We’re investing more in Europe,” said Walsh. “We’re investing more in the world. We’re up to 84 games. We’re in the Olympics. We’re in the World Cup. It’s a different business than it was 20 years ago. So, it’s growing and evolving and changing. I think that part of the growth to the game is also the exposure to fans about their favorite players. What they wear. What they like. What they eat. All of that stuff. There’s more and more of that happening.

“You’ve seen the success of other leagues doing it, so if a player is comfortable with that, we support them to do that.”