As soon as you start needing players outside of the NHL you're going to need to get the IIHF involved and that complicates things considerably.
This is a legit concern.
It’s time for the IIHF and NHL to start working together more closely. With the Olympic issues sorted out and the NHL starting to run its own tournaments again, IIHF is creeping toward irrelevance. Their insistence on holding the annual WC against the NHL playoffs is just silly and self-harming. This isn’t the 80s where there are separate spheres of influence… NHL is now fully internationalized and for the foreseeable future it will “own” the top tier of international competition. Both sides need each other to make the system work top-to-bottom as it should. It’s not like the NHL wants to run tournaments in Mexico, that will always be IIHF’s role. But there is a lot of upside to partnering and creating a “big tent” atmosphere for global hockey with the best NHL talent representing their various countries.
Reminds me of the late 90s when minor league hockey was in the process of consolidating into a unified system under the NHL. There was a window of time when the IHL could have put aside its pride and negotiated an agreement to operate in partnership with the NHL and AHL, providing a place for veteran players to finish their careers in a non-developmental atmosphere. They missed that window, the IHL no longer exists, and aging pros end up exiled in Siberia instead of building an NHL market Orlando. All because some execs felt the need to squabble over crumbs of minor league revenue.
All Star Games/Weeks are also big corporate and sponsorship gatherings where the NHL execs invite in a bunch of other billionaires and give each other reach-arounds.
Don't see it going away completely in the near future despite how much viewership drops and players are disinterested.
I agree, but why wouldn’t this translate? What was once an ASG held over a weekend in one city becomes an international event held in two cities. It allows for a lot more ticket revenue due to a higher number of events, a bigger headline for the host city (let’s be honest the ASG is a non-event outside of hockey circles) and the “city takeover” aspect is even more pronounced. And even for the corporations, an international tourney is a much stronger sponsorship magnet than an ASG.
Personally, I’d much much rather my home town host a World Cup/4N than an ASG.
Depending on the severity of the Tkachuk injury it may make teams very reluctant to loan out their players to these tournaments. Especially on an annual basis
At the end of the day, it’s an NHL event and therefore their job to participate. It’ll be a CBA issue but I could foresee something like splitting off the revenue from these events into a separate pool to be shared by the owners and
participating players. That would give the players a financial incentive to play, and much like the ASG anyone who dodges that obligation could be penalized on top of missing out on that paycheck.
Of course there would still be scenarios where owners get upset about injuries, but that just comes down to recognizing that they’ve committed to international competition being part of their product with all the risks that entails. There’s more than just the Stanley Cup to be competed for.
