How would the Winter Olympics fit into a changed NHL schedule?

NHL players are reportedly returning to the Winter Olympics.

While there has been no one ice NHL action for the past few months, there’s been a lot of action going on in the labor relations world of the NHL. The NHL and NHLPA have seemingly agreed to an extension of the CBA that save the sport from yet another lockout. Also potentially included is an agreement to send NHL players to the Olympics after the league sat out the 2018 games in South Korea.

The Winter Olympics want NHL players and NHL players want to go to the Olympics. They even mentioned it as a major goal in the next round of labor negotiations before the CBA negotiations took place. Players have gone to the Olympics many times before, so this is nothing new. If the league makes a rumored change to their season, we might run into a problem.

With this season likely ending with the Stanley Cup being awarded in October, that could push the start of the 2020-2021 season to January. With next season’s time frame looking like January to sometime into the summer, there has been speculation that change might be permanent and the seasons of October to June hockey are a thing of the past. If that happens, where exactly would the Olympics fit in?

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For the most part, the Olympics take place during a two week period mostly in February. When NHL athletes participate that means the NHL shuts down for a number of weeks before restarting. The last time the league participated in Olympics, saw the league take a break from February 9, 2014-February 25, 2014.

So if the NHL moves its regular season schedule to a January start, how would the Olympics fit in? Does the NHL want to get a month’s worth of action before stopping its season? Perhaps they hold off entirely until the Olympics are done and have the regular season begin in late February?

The move that makes the most sense would be perhaps starting the season a month early in December to at least get a solid two months in before any stoppage in play.

Obviously this is a move that the NHL will deal with when it comes time. The schedule change to January is nothing more than speculation now. It’s probably easier to move the dates of the NHL regular season anyway.

Perhaps the NHL will keep their schedule the way it’s always been. That might be the easier of the two options. Remember when people started thinking of the “let’s move the season to a January start” any Olympic problems most likely were not taken into consideration. We have a few years to wait and see.