It is finally here. It has felt like forever since we have been able to utter these words: There will be NHL players participating at the upcoming Winter Olympics.
Announced by the NHL, NHLPA, and IIHF on Friday afternoon, NHL players will officially be able to participate in both the 2026 and 2030 Winter Olympics.
Taking place through February 2026, the upcoming Winte Olympics will be in the Italian cities of Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo, and will have the first best-on-best men’s international hockey being played since 2010. Sixteen years since we have seen this happen and the entire sport has changed, especially considering the personnel who sit on top of the NHL as we know it today.
One significant question that hovers over everything involved with any upcoming international hockey tournament is Russia’s participation. Thankfully, the IIHF will be having a council meeting next week to have a conversation regarding the possibility of Russian athletes being welcomed back at these events.
That decision will be most likely for upcoming tournaments like the Under-18 Hlinka Gretzky Cup and next year’s World Juniors tournament, but for bigger events like the 2026 Winter Olympics, that could be a separate decision down the line.
Another interesting note is that for the 2026 Olympics, the rink size will be the NHL dimensions of 200 feet by 85 feet, and not the international size of 196.9 feet by 98.4 feet.
So, there will be a couple changes that could draw away from the same, fuzzy feeling of a best-on-best tournament featuring our favorite players, but it shouldn’t ruin everything. Maybe just a little less fun to think about Cale Makar not being able to have all the extra ice he can think of.
It has been an incredibly long time since we have had this. The best players in the league currently, like Connor McDavid, Nikita Kucherov, Nathan MacKinnon, and Auston Matthews, have never had the chance to represent their country in an Olympics. The most they did was that World Cup in Toronto and even that felt half-hearted. Now, we’re seeing it for real and it will be incredible.
