NHL Takes Center Ice

Salt Lake City. If they can’t make it there, they can’t make it anywhere.

The Winter Games are in a friendly time zone with easy travel arrangements, ideal conditions for the NHL to showcase its players in Olympic competition.

. Compare that to the first time the league took a midseason break to send its players to the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan, where travel was grueling and the sport was often relegated to second-tier status.

How the Salt Lake tournament fares, how many viewers watch and how the players feel will all help determine whether the NHL continues its Olympic involvement. So far, the league has committed to the Games a little less than two years before they start.

“We do one Olympics at a time,” William Daly, NHL executive vice president and chief legal officer, said. “It’s ultimately a decision for our board of governors, but we’ll help kind of analyze the objective data for them and help them kind of shape their thought process as to whether it’s a good thing or bad thing for us.

“I think the whole premise is, there’s no doubt, we’re going to get unparalleled exposure for the sport, exposure that it’s never had in this country before. That ultimately will benefit the sport as a whole and professional hockey, and hopefully to the benefit of the NHL. We’ve always taken the position that if you see the sport and watch it, it’ll sell itself.”

The 1998 Games suffered from bad logistics and worse circumstances. With Japan across the Pacific Ocean and the International Date Line, 9 a.m. Wednesday in Nagano was 8 p.m. Tuesday in New York. To make it worse, CBS showed much of the play at midnight in the U.S. Then the U.S. team failed to make it to the medal round. The ratings peaked at 4.9 for a weekend game between the United States and Canada. But the gold-medal game between Russia and the Czech Republic drew a 3.2.

This winter, 30 of the 32 hockey games will be televised live. Most will be on CNBC and some will be shown by MSNBC. Men’s hockey will air on NBC six times, including prime-time games on Friday, Feb. 15, and Wednesday, Feb. 20. The gold-medal game will be shown in the 11:30 a.m.-3 p.m. (Pacific time) block on Sunday, Feb. 24.

Salt Lake City’s proximity means less travel time and minimal jet lag. Thus the midseason break was cut from 17 days to 12. Players apparently have less problem with the Olympic break than they do with the All-Star break, which many see as another interruption and time commitment in a busy season. They would rather have that time to rest. The league, of course, doesn’t agree with that view.

Referring to it as “part of the fabric of our season,” Daly said, “If we weren’t having an All-Star game, we would not be taking a break in our season. It’s not like they’d get the four days off. They’d be playing regular-season games.”

Time is a key issue to the players’ union. For example, players who make it to the gold-medal game will have played three games in five days, then will resume their NHL seasons 48 hours later.

Ted Saskin, senior director of business affairs and licensing for the NHL Players’ Assn., said the union is generally in favor of Olympic participation but will discuss the future among its membership and with the league after the Games.

“I think, in any Olympics, a lot of the success is from a player perspective if they feel the on-ice competition has been handled well,” Saskin said. “Given the events of Sept. 11, the security elements of the Olympic games is going to have an increased effect on how the player and fan experience is at Salt Lake.”

Said Darius Kasparaitis, a Pittsburgh Penguin defenseman and member of the Russian Olympic team, “I think the NHL should be involved in the Olympics. They should have more rest. Maybe they shouldn’t have the All-Star game that year. I think they should have the Olympics. It’s good stuff to go there and be a part of the other athletes and sports. I think professional sports used to be more isolated from other sports.

“Guys are still proud of going to the Olympics and still want to win a gold medal. You win a gold medal, you’re going to keep it the rest of your life.”