Many players, coaches and staff members have tested positive across the NHL.
“Certainly, the players and hockey fans are quite disappointed,” NHLPA executive director Don Fehr said in a separate statement.
The Olympics are supposed to be about best-on-best competition, national pride and pageantry.
But in Beijing, players, coaches and staff members would have been confined to what the playbook called a “closed loop” — in other words, a bubble separated from the city.
Based on experience, the NHL feels stopping its season so the players can perform in someone else’s tournament hurts more than helps, especially when the Olympics are not held in North America.
As badly as the players want to participate in the Olympics, the focus must be health, safety and the NHL season.
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