NHL is missing a huge marketing opportunity

When it comes to possessing integrity and honour, National Hockey League team owners have no reason to be smug.
For they possess little of either quality.
Gasp! An owner of a sports team whose word is not to be trusted? Pssssshaw. Just ask the NHL players association for character references.
Too bad someone didn’t take IIHF president Rene Fasel aside and mention how selfish NHL owners can be, thinking themselves bigger than even the Olympics. Like many of us, poor ol’ Rene must be scratching his head wondering how it is that players have been dropping like flies with various tweaks and twitches as the men’s hockey tournament approaches.
When owners agreed to player participation in the Turin Olympics as part of their most recent collective bargaining agreement, hands up among us who could not see how players might start pulling out due to injuries — nagging, phantom and otherwise — as the Games approached.
Sure enough, some 20 would-be stars are not going to be representing their countries for the tournament that starts this week. Surely, some are injured. A few are nursing minor hurts. And, no doubt, even a few plan to be hurt real soon if they have to play in the Games. Just ask their owners.
One has to know some of these players are not going to be in Turin because they are following orders of the bosses who sign their paychecks to not play. A player must have an allegiance to his regular job, that is true.
But one must agree with Fasel who wonders aloud how the NHL can be so shortsighted as to miss out on what might just be the best marketing tool it ever is handed on a platter by not permitting the best players to promote the sport on the world’s greatest sports stage.
If the owners were at all interested in the long-term future of the sport, many of those players might be in Turin. As it stands, long-term in the eyes of the owners is this season’s playoffs, which start in early April.
In essence, the owners are all for betterment of the sport just so long as it doesn’t affect their day-to-day operations.
Another example of the quality character it requires to be a team owner. Is it any wonder players don’t trust these guys?
Is it any wonder bowling rivals hockey for television audiences in the United States?