The Hockey News Olympic Preview 2022

DISAPPOINTMENT HAS been a constant during the pandemic, and no doubt a lot of folks have lost their energy for international hockey these days. The World Junior Championship was cancelled after a couple of days, with ‘Red Deer Wedding’ entering the hockey lexicon as a euphemism for an embarrassingly preventable disaster. As for the Olympics, the NHL and NHLPA came to an agreement that the top men’s players in the world would not be travelling to Beijing as Omicron decimated the NHL schedule and Chinese quarantine rules raised the specter of an MVP-caliber player missing weeks of NHL action due to a positive test result. Not everyone was happy with the decision (we hear you, Brad Marchand), but as hockey players love to say, it is what it is. What we can…

I HAVE BEEN ON THE Canadian Olympic Committee as a Supporter for five years now, and although I fully support the Canadian athletes, I also support every country’s athletes’ hopes and dreams that each of them take with them to the Games. While most athletes’ main focus is getting on the podium, all of them will leave with the high of simply experiencing the satisfaction of representing one’s home country. Although I cannot share that experience with the athletes, one that I do share with some, if not all, of the athletes is the big picture, the Olympic-size picture of what the Games should represent to humankind. To me, the Olympics should be about countries and their representative athletes, trainers, coaches and staff competing fairly, with respect and dignity toward other people…

THE CALL WAS EASY by any standard in any era. Ottawa Senators prospect left winger Ridly Greig, competing in pre-season action against the Winnipeg Jets, was a deer in the middle of the road with the mighty Pierre-Luc Dubois speeding toward him. Greig instinctively raised his stick and caught Dubois with a meaty cross-check to the mouth. The dirty blow earned Greig a five-minute major and game misconduct. The NHL’s department of player safety also handed Greig a two-game ban for cross-checking. It was the first cross-checking suspension doled out in the 2021-22 NHL calendar. Through early January 2022, it was the only one, but that stat was misleading. Offenders weren’t evading the law. The NHL’s player population was scared straight. The league had promised a crackdown on cross-checking in 2021-22,…

YOUNGSTOWN PHANTOMS >2021-22 PURPLE. ON. PURPLE. That's the headline of this awesome jersey from the USHL’s Youngstown Phantoms, who have had a lot of fun and success with different designs of late, including grey and orange bases. The fact they have an awesome logo to work with helps – the mascot comes from the fireworks company the team is named after – but the colors are just so cool here. The two purples look great, and the black shoulders help accent them, as do the white stripes on the arms. Youngstown wore these last season as well, but now it’s their primary dark sweater. Long may the purple reign.…

UPPER DECK WILL MAKE trading cards of players from the Premier Hockey Federation – formerly the National Women’s Hockey League – starting this fall. But did you know that some of the earliest cards to feature women’s hockey players were issued nearly three decades ago? “Women of Hockey” was a special insert set found in packs of 1994-95 Classic Hockey that featured 20 Canadian and 19 American players. Many of these players went on to compete in the 1998 Winter Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan – the first time women’s hockey was an Olympic medal sport. And several of those players were later inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame, including Cammi Granato, Hayley Wickenheiser, Geraldine Heaney and Danielle Goyette.…

COACHING IN THE pandemic era of professional hockey is a crash course in pragmatism, particularly at the minor-league levels. Just ask Manitoba Moose coach Mark Morrison. In an ideal world, Morrison would be spending his first campaign as head honcho on an AHL bench tossing Winnipeg Jets top prospect Cole Perfetti over the boards, sending Dylan Samberg and Ville Heinola out to defend in tight games and entrusting netminder Mikhail Berdin with securing two points on a near nightly basis. But when the NHL reintroduced taxi squads in late December amid COVID-19 outbreaks and the Omicron variant’s rapid spread, any blueprints Morrison had for his Moose roster weren’t worth the lineup cards they were written on. Arguably no AHL roster was hit harder by the taxi squads in terms of personnel…