Will the NHL participate in the 2026 Winter Olympics?

The NHL and its players haven’t participated in the Olympics since 2014 when Canada took gold in Sochi and just as it seemed like the 2026 Olympics would finally give us the chance to see Connor McDavid, Auston Matthews and Nathan MacKinnon don their iconic home countries jerseys, another roadblock arises. This time, it’s the lack of an arena for the tournament in Milan being built that may cause issues.

Frank Seravalli reveals more on the situation on "Daily Faceoff Live" after another day of Board of Governor meetings on Tuesday.

Frank Seravalli: I think for the first time in years, like almost a decade, we’re not hearing any complaint or criticism with the IIHF and the International Olympic Committee in terms of paying for things that they typically should, such as insurance, travel, a combination for players and also their families. So it seems like they’re in alignment on that front and it kind of feels like for once, if the NHL players don’t go to the Olympics, it’s not going to be because of the NHL.

However, I understand what you’re saying if you squint hard enough, you can sort of see a ready-made excuse that was being built up as a reason for why the NHL might have to pull the plug ahead of Milan, and that is because they haven’t put shovels into the ground yet on an arena to host the 2026 Winter Olympics ice hockey tournament. That’s kind of problematic because, as the league pointed out, if it’s not completed until the fourth quarter of 2025, well then that only leaves you 6-8 weeks of wiggle room before the tournament would begin. You can’t host an event to test it, you can’t really work on the ice, there’s a lot of things that would have to go into getting that ready in a short period of time.

So then the next question becomes what happens if they hit a major delay between now and then and it does get pushed back and it’s quite clear that the tournament won’t be able to played in Milan at that site. There’s some options somewhat nearby, two hours away there’s an arena in Torino, an hour north in Switzerland in Lugano, there’s another arena that you could host this at, but then you heard the deputy commissioner Bill Daly point out that maybe if they’re not in the Olympic experience that players might not want to go.

I think this kind of opens the door for the NHL to say later on “We told you so, we’re ready to go, we were here. We’ve got the agreement, but you guys can’t get your act together.” I think that’s something that the NHL has certainly put out there for everyone to consume as you will.

You can watch the full episode here.