Bettman still down on Olympics; NHLPA’s Fehr ‘more optimistic now than I ever have been’
TORONTO — NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and NHL Players’ Association executive director Donald Fehr offered competing visions on the likelihood that NHL players will attend the Pyeongchang Games in 2018.
Speaking ahead of the NHL Centennial Classic on Sunday afternoon, Bettman kept pushing a now-familiar narrative that NHL owners were reluctant to return for a sixth consecutive Olympics. Fehr, on the other hand, said he was “more optimistic now than I ever have been” that players would ultimately go.
Fehr said he was confident that a deal would be reached with the IIHF and IOC which would allow for that possibility.
Bettman, conversely, said there was nothing new to report from early December when the NHL’s board of governors met in Palm Beach, Fla., and voiced “strong negative sentiment” to the Olympics, citing the challenges of a season shutdown, the lack of tangible benefit to the league and the IOC’s resistance to covering out-of-pocket payments for players to attend.