Olympic Hockey may take place without Team USA
This would be a truly awful development after waiting so long for NHLers to go back to the Olympics. With the Winter Games set to take place in February from Beijing comes word that the United States is considering at least a diplomatic boycott to protest human rights abuses by China.
"That is something we are considering," said US President Joe Biden on Thursday when asked about a potential boycott of the games.
While a diplomatic boycott would not directly impact the athletes at the games (it would be limited to US officials), Biden spokeswoman Jen Psaki said later at the Whitehouse that the US is still finalising "what our presence will be" at the games, which are due to begin on February 4th.
Both Democrat and Republican lawmakers in the US are calling for the diplomatic boycott. Whether it will stay at that or extend to athletes remains to be seen. Republican Senator Tom Cotton said on Thursday that a diplomatic boycott of the "genocide Olympics" would be "too little, too late" and called for a total boycott of all athletes, officials and US corporate sponsors. Nikki Haley, the former US representative to the UN under Donald Trump, has also called for a complete boycott.
While I understand the reasoning behind, it would be horrible to finally have NHLers back at the Olympics and have one of the top teams in the Ice Hockey tournament bow out at the last minute. It would not be the first time the US has decided not to take part in the Olympics. The country completely boycotted the 1980 Summer Games to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The event was held in Moscow that year. In turn, the Soviet Union and its allies later boycotted the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
Source: BBC.com
| G | A | PTS | ||
| Kyle Connor | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Alex Tuch | 1 | 1 | 2 | |
| Owen Power | - | 2 | 2 | |
| Michael Bunting | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Drew Helleson | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Jirí Kulich | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Isac Lundestrom | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Vladislav Namestnikov | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Nino Niederreiter | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Gabriel Vilardi | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Jason Zucker | 1 | - | 1 | |
| Leo Carlsson | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Nikolaj Ehlers | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Ross Johnston | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Evgeni Malkin | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Josh Morrissey | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Cole Perfetti | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Bryan Rust | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Mark Scheifele | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Trevor Zegras | - | 1 | 1 | |
| Complete stats | ||||
| STANDINGS 2024-2025 | ||||||
TOP 10 | GP | W | L | OL | PTS | |
Jets | 20 | 17 | 3 | - | 34 | |
Wild | 19 | 13 | 3 | 3 | 29 | |
Hurricanes | 19 | 14 | 5 | - | 28 | |
Devils | 22 | 13 | 7 | 2 | 28 | |
Capitals | 19 | 13 | 5 | 1 | 27 | |
Golden Knights | 20 | 12 | 6 | 2 | 26 | |
Maple Leafs | 20 | 12 | 6 | 2 | 26 | |
Rangers | 18 | 12 | 5 | 1 | 25 | |
Panthers | 20 | 12 | 7 | 1 | 25 | |
Flames | 20 | 11 | 6 | 3 | 25 | |
| Conference | Cumulative | ||||||