You won’t find Sidney Crosby. Don’t look for Alexander Ovechkin, Aleksander Barkov, Connor McDavid or any other NHL star.
For the first time since 1994, the Winter Olympics, which began Thursday, will be without current NHL players. Most people will tune out Olympic hockey this year, especially since the games will be played in the wee hours of the late night/early morning Eastern Standard Time.
But that doesn’t mean this year’s Olympic hockey tournament in South Korea can’t be competitive and compelling, exhilarating and exciting.
Lake Placid in 1980, you might recall, had no NHL players, and that locale delivered a rather miraculous result, USA over the Soviet Union.