Lapsed fan's guide to the Olympic men's hockey tournament - ESPN

The 2026 Milan Cortina Olympic men's ice hockey tournament begins Wednesday with round-robin play, and it's the first time NHL players have participated in the Winter Games since 2014.

Here's a primer for this best-on-best tournament for the hockey die-hards — and for those Olympic fans asking, «What's a Tkachuk?»

The NHL began sending its players to the Winter Olympics in 1998. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Canada men have won three gold medals since then, having previously not won once since 1952. Canada's last gold was in the 2014 Sochi Games, which was also the last time NHL players graced Olympic ice.

For decades, the NHL and its players have sparred over Olympic participation. The players want to represent their countries in the world's most prestigious and historic athletic event — like the generations of Americans inspired by the «Miracle on Ice» in 1980. NHL owners are loathe to shut down their regular season and loan their talent to an IOC that doesn't share revenues or give the league any tangible financial benefit. But for the sake of «growing the game,» the NHL has participated, with some exceptions.

The league didn't participate in the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang because of a change in terms with the IOC and because «the overwhelming majority of our clubs» were «adamantly opposed» to disrupting the 2017-18 season, according to commissioner Gary Bettman, who was also seeking concessions from the NHL Players Association. NHL owners were opposed to shutting down the regular season to play in South Korea, a market the league didn't consider a priority for global growth.

Discouraged by that decision, the NHLPA had language written into their new collective bargaining agreement signed in 2020 that stated the