By Peter Wojciechowski | January 27, 2018 12:42:33As the NHL begins its 2017-18 season, we’re starting to get an idea of how much the NHL will be missing from the Winter Games.
The Toronto Maple Leaf Hockey Club is set to be the host city for the 2018 Winter Olympics, and while the NHL and the NHLPA will not be playing in the games, it’s not quite as bad as it first appears.
The league has not played a game since the 2002 World Championship, and the 2019 World Cup of Hockey is scheduled to take place in South Korea, not North Korea.
But that hasn’t stopped the NHL from making some interesting choices when it comes to hosting the Winter Olympics.
The Toronto Maple Sports Centre is set up for the 2020 Winter Olympics in 2020, which would be the first time the league has hosted a Winter Olympics outside of Canada since the 2014 Vancouver Games.
There are several reasons for that.
One of the biggest is that the NHL has been planning on playing the Leafs in 2020 for years.
While it is true that the Leafs are not yet eligible for the 2024 Olympics, the NHL is not expected to drop out of the race until 2022, at the earliest.
The NHL and NHLPA have agreed that the league would play a game at the Maple Leaf Sports Centre in 2021, which is set for March 8.
While the NHL had planned to play the Leafs at home against the Anaheim Ducks on March 2, that date was pushed back due to the NHL lockout.
The next major scheduling change for the NHL came in 2022, when the NHL announced it would play two games at the Rogers Centre, with the Toronto Jets playing the Ottawa Senators in November and the Anaheim Mighty Ducks in December.
Both games would be played at the same time, and there was no news of a third game.
However, the Maple Leafs were scheduled to host the Jets at the Air Canada Centre in October, which has now been pushed back to December.
If the NHL were to play at Rogers Centre in 2020 instead, the Leafs would still be eligible for a 2019 Olympics, as the NHL would have to make the final decision on hosting the 2019 Olympics in Toronto.
There’s also a possibility that the Maple Jets would be invited to play.
The 2022 NHL schedule will be announced on February 25, 2019, with three games remaining in the regular season: the Toronto Blues at the Bell Centre in March, the Ottawa 67s at the TD Place Centre in April, and a pair of games against the Carolina Hurricanes in May and June.
There is a chance that a pair could be played, but those games would still have to be played on the same day.
If a fourth game was to be held in the Bell and TD Place venues, that would put the NHL back in the middle of its schedule for 2022.
The NHL could still play the Jets in February 2019, but that would mean the Leafs could be ineligible for 2020 as well.
A fourth game could still happen if the NHL decides to host an alternate venue, but the timing would have a lot to do with whether the NHL was going to be playing at the new TD Place venue or the Bell.