NHL players reportedly considered extreme measures such as retirement to participate at 2022 Olympics

In late December, the National Hockey League announced that they wouldn't be sending their players to the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China. That left participating nations with the task to work with their Plan B rosters and coaching/management staff.

Before the decision was made, NHL players reportedly looked at every loophole they could to get to the Olympics according to Sportsnet's Elliotte Friedman.

"I was just talking to a couple of other players and they told me one of the things, just to give you an idea of how they felt about it, one of the things a few of them asked was, 'Could we retire or find some way to void our contracts, go play the Olympics and find a way to come re-sign?'", Friedman said.

He added, "And a couple of them said, could they retire and come back. They also asked, 'Could we be in a situation where we could ask to be put on waivers for the purposes of termination and then come back after the Olympics and re-sign with our team?' One of them kind of laughed and said to me they were told, 'You think the NHL is ever going to allow you to try anything like that? There is not a chance.'"

This just shows how much going to the Olympics means to the players. For example, a guy like Nikolaj Ehlers who took time out of his summer in 2021 to help his nation, Denmark, qualify for their first-ever Olympic Games. Now because of the NHL's decision, he won't get to participate.

"I just thought it was pretty interesting that that's the kind of questions the players were asking, that's how badly they wanted to play, they were trying to find any loophole they could to try to find a way to get overseas," Friedman said. "But the NHL was wise to these kinds of plans."

The 2022 Winter Olympics will be the second consecutive one that the NHL hasn't sent their players to. Their next opportunity for the Olympics will be in 2026 which is set to be hosted by Milan and Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.

Source: Sportsnet.

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