Men’s ice hockey begins on Wednesday at the Winter Olympics — but without the world’s top players. For the first time since the 1994 games, National Hockey League players won’t be competing. It isn’t that they don’t want to play. The Canadian star Sidney Crosby, probably the best player in the world, put it this way: “I’d love to be there.” The Russian star Alex Ovechkin, who has participated in three Olympics, and Patrick Kane, one of the best American players, expressed a strong desire to compete, too.
But the National Hockey League says it now cannot “see what the benefit is” in Olympic participation, and insists that its players are contractually obliged to skip the games.