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The wait is slowly coming to an end for a best-on-best men’s hockey tournament.
At the Board of Governors meetings in Seattle, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman told reporters that the league is aiming to begin an in-season international tournament by 2025.
“We want to have, starting if possible in ’25, an in-season international tournament, which wouldn’t be the World Cup but it would be a preview of international best-on-best, with the goal being in 2028 to unveil a full World Cup,” Bettman told reporters on Tuesday.
Calling it an “appetizer” for an eventual World Cup of Hockey, Bettman said the international in-season tournament will focus primarily on the premier hockey countries — namely, Canada, the United States, Sweden and Finland — to provide an intro to international best-on-best tournaments in the NHL, coinciding with a break in the schedule.
The last best-on-best tournament happened in 2016 when Canada hosted the World Cup of Hockey. Participants included Canada (24-and-over), the United States (24-and-over), Czechia, Finland, Sweden, Russia, Europe and North America (23-and-under).
NHL players have not been permitted to participate in the Olympics since 2014. Though there had been talk of allowing players to go to the 2022 Olympics, COVID-19 restrictions ultimately lead to the league deciding not to send players to Beijing to compete.
The 2026 Olympic Games in Milan are still a topic of conversation between the league and the Players Association, which deputy commissioner Bill Daly called “a work in progress” last month, but Bettman did say the goal is to have a rotating schedule between the Olympics and World Cup of Hockey in the future.
“The ultimate goal is to have Olympics, two years later World Cup, two years later Olympics, two years later World Cup,” Bettman said. “That’s the cycle we’re trying to get on, but we figured we’d try a bit of an appetizer between now and then.”
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