NHL Sees Gold on the Horizon : Hockey: McNall, Stein say that 1994 Winter Games could become springboard for increased TV exposure.

Casting an envious eye at the publicity received by the 1992 U.S. Olympic men’s basketball team, the NHL’s new top officials want to see their stars in the 1994 Winter Games at Lillehammer, Norway.

Interim president Gil Stein, who is on a 24-city NHL tour, has been talking for the last week about the need for the league to use the Olympics to gain international exposure as well as potential future television revenue.

King owner Bruce McNall, elected chairman of the NHL’s Board of Governors last month, agrees. McNall’s support is key because the chairman traditionally has been the NHL’s most powerful figure.

“It’s do-able,” McNall said. “Whether or not the governors would agree, I don’t know. But it’s one of the options we should look at--especially in light of the television exposure. It’s something you can’t buy.”

McNall is thinking of traveling to Barcelona to see the Summer Games after being invited by Dick Ebersol, president of NBC Sports.

Stein and McNall have been stressing the importance of a network television contract since the league meetings last month in Montreal. Stein has approached Fox Broadcasting and ESPN, attempting to secure a major national contract.

Since the league left ESPN four seasons ago, critics have said the NHL’s move into new regions in the United States has been slowed by its deal with SportsChannel, which has had slower than expected growth.

McNall said that exposing the NHL’s stars to a worldwide audience would help when it came to negotiating U.S. broadcast rights for the regular season and playoffs.

“What’s happened with the Dream Team is phenomenal,” he said. “I think it will be more so when we see the viewership numbers from the Olympics.”

McNall doesn’t claim to have come up with the idea.

“Actually, Wayne Gretzky first put it to me during the (’92 Winter Games),” he said. “Wayne said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great?’ That was the first time it was mentioned to me. Then (Philadelphia owner) Ed Snider brought it up to me at the (June) meetings. It’s something you have to be interested in.”

For Gretzky, 31, playing in the Olympics is about the only thing he hasn’t accomplished in hockey. He has always had national pride, giving up about seven weeks of his summer every three or four years to represent Canada in the Canada Cup tournament.

There would be one major difference between Olympic basketball and Olympic hockey: There would be two all-star teams instead of one.

The United States would be led by players such as Brett Hull, while Team Canada would have stars such as Gretzky, Mario Lemieux and Eric Lindros, to name only a few.

The proposal hasn’t received warm endorsements from Hockey Canada chairman Ian MacDonald or Baaron Pittenger, executive director of USA Hockey. Pittenger was unavailable for comment Friday, but earlier in the week he expressed mixed feelings, noting that the U.S. gold medal team in 1980 didn’t have any NHL players.

“The thing that made it so special was that was an underdog team that accomplished a miracle,” Pittenger told the Associated Press. “Do you want to deprive younger players that opportunity to represent their nation in order to pursue greater success in the competition?”

To McNall, the most significant hurdle is whether the other NHL governors will accept shutting down the league for three weeks in February.

“It is only once every four years,” McNall said. “We may have to have a study that will show the effects . . . for our pocketbooks over the short term.”

Bill Hay, the Calgary Flames’ president, backed the idea of having the best players at the Olympics, but said that interest in the NHL is intense in February. Barry Shenkarow, Winnipeg’s owner and president, offered qualified support.

Stein, however, doesn’t want to let this international opportunity slip away.

“We need to get up and running, and we haven’t done very well in Europe,” he said.

“We’ve sort of let the parade run by.”