On Feb. 12, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman and the National Hockey League Players Association (NHLPA) executive director Marty Walsh announced that the NHL will bring back the World Cup of Hockey as an in-season tournament in 2028. This will follow the upcoming 2026 Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina. According to Sportsnet’s hockey insider Elliotte Friedman, the NHL and NHLPA desire to have best-on-best hockey every two years, with both tournaments in motion. Of course, the NHL players would also attend the 2030 Winter Olympics in France, as announced in 2024.
Expectations For the 2028 World Cup of Hockey
The 2028 World Cup of Hockey details were brief and to the point. Eight teams will participate in this tournament, which will be held in February of that year and will most likely replace the All-Star Game like this year with the 4 Nations Face-Off.
The last time the NHL hosted the World Cup of Hockey was in September 2016, a month before the NHL season began. In that tournament, they also had two blended teams: Team North America, which had all of the best under-23 talent from Canada and the USA, and Team Europe, which had all the remaining talent from Europe whose nations did not play in the tournament.
Related: The 4 Nations Face-Off Without Russia Is Pointless
However, in 2028, they will not include those extra teams, meaning more room for other nations to compete. It will be a mystery to see who will fill the eighth spot. The first seven nations to expect would be Canada, USA, Finland, Sweden, Czechia, Slovakia, and Switzerland. That said, there are a lot of questions about whether Russia will compete, considering the political issues with the Russia-Ukraine war. The same day this tournament was announced, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) also announced its ban on Russia and Belarus competing during the 2024-25 hockey calendar. Bettman didn’t have much to confirm on a possible Russian appearance, other than that the NHL “will have enough time to deal with the realities of what the world situation looks like before then.”
If Russia is omitted, we may see Germany take the remaining slot, since they hold the ninth spot among most active NHL players. It has three key superstars, including this season’s leading goal scorer, Leon Draisaitl, Tim Stutzle, and J.J. Peterka. They are also in a great position to make the Olympics, and it would be awesome to see Germany with Draisaitl leading the way.
Effects of Having Best-on-Best Hockey
Having a best-on-best international hockey tournament has been a long time coming, and the 2016 World Cup of Hockey brought people out of their seats with how many memorable moments there were. Also, not having NHL players at the Winter Olympics in 2018 and 2022 brought down the spirit of excitement and watered it down. Every time the Winter Olympics came, seeing who would make the rosters and how it would play out was exciting, but there wasn’t much enthusiasm afterward without NHL players.
The new format from the NHL and NHLPA sounds fair and gives fans what they want to see. It will also open up some room for the All-Star Game to continue between the Olympic and World Cup of Hockey years. However, the NHL has been the only league out of the big four to do this in-season type of international play. The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA) launched a league for European nations in soccer to compete in called the Nations League in 2018, and it runs between soccer seasons with all of the best talent in European soccer playing for their countries in a group style format. This closely resembles the NHL’s World Cup of Hockey, and I think that the NHL launching its international play during the season will influence other leagues like the NBA or MLB to do the same.
Notably, with some competition from the NBA’s Cup Tournament, which began in the 2023-24 season, the World Cup of Hockey will take some time to settle in. Still, it will have much more excitement than the NBA Cup, considering it will take all the best players from eight nations and face them off rather than putting teams in the league against each other as the NBA does.
Next Chapter of International Play in Hockey
In addition to the IIHF’s World Championship (WC) and World Junior Championship (WJC) tournaments, which occur annually, having both the World Cup of Hockey and NHL players at the Winter Olympics will be fantastic to see happening back-to-back. The World Cup of Hockey will give younger and older players something other than the Stanley Cup to work toward and prepare nations for the bigger stage at the Olympics to see who best suits their squads.
Playing for your country is also something that everyone, fans and players alike, looks forward to. NHLPA assistant executive director Ron Hainsey even mentioned in the announcement that “the long-term goal here is that this just becomes over the long term where fans, players, everyone can look forward to these guys playing for their countries regularly and honestly creating moments like Sid (Crosby) did in 2010 with the golden goal here in Canada (at Vancouver Olympics).”
Having something create big moments like that would be great and bring life back into international hockey and not just wait until the WJC or WC to see some tremendous international hockey. Here, it’s best to offer on NHL ice and with nations also allowed to make bids to host the World Cup of Hockey in their home territory, which can hopefully grow the game a lot more. While the 4 Nations Face-Off continues, it will build a lot of anticipation for what the NHL has in store for the future, with powerhouse nations building rivalry matchups like Canada vs. USA and Sweden vs. Finland.
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