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Surely the NHL won’t use Italy rink concerns as a reason pull players from Olympics… right?

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The NHL’s relationship with its players playing on the international stage is… convoluted at best.

The league didn’t send any of its players until the 1998 Olympics, forming a relationship with the international hockey community that ran unabated for two decades. The Czech Republic would take the Gold Medal that year, and one has to wonder if Canada’s poor roster selection played a part in getting bumped in the semi-finals.

General manager Bobby Clarke named Eric Lindros, the captain of his Philadelphia Flyers, captain over the likes of Wayne Gretzky and others, while the likes of Mark Messier, Adam Oates, Ron Francis, Doug Gilmour and Scott Niedermayer were left off it.

Canada would learn their lesson in 2002, bringing forth a team that would shake off a slow start to win the country’s seventh Olympic Gold medal in men’s ice hockey. The defending champs would struggle to repeat in 2006, dropping two stage games before losing to Russia in the quarter-finals, which once again, only would light a fire under them, securing Gold Medals in 2010 and 2014 that are etched into hockey lore.

But that’s when things started to change. The NHL didn’t send their players to South Korea in 2018 after disputes rose between them and the International Olympic Committee, citing league owners who felt a 17-day break in the schedule in February — while the NFL season had ended and MLB’s season had yet to kick off — wasn’t warranted. Other issues, such as the IOC refusing to pay costs including travel, insurance and accommodations, played into things,........

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