National Sports Journalism Center

"Enjoy hockey’s Olympic moment while it’s still aglow because its luster is beginning to fade," Dave Anderson writes, adding, "Instead of looking forward to the splendor of the world’s best players again representing their nations in 2014 in Sochi, Russia, the National Hockey League is leaning toward secession from the Winter Games. Sochi is too far away for its fans to care, the NHL argues. With an eight-hour time difference between Sochi and the Eastern time zone, some games there would be played when most American viewers are working or asleep.Television money is involved. When the rights to the Sochi Olympics and the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro are up for bid late this year, the two expected bidders, NBC and ESPN, will need to know whether the N.H.L., which supplied 140 players for the Vancouver Games, will play again. If not, the bids will probably be lower."