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The NHL has decided to cancel a planned media day with players before they head to the Milan Olympics in February, league sources told The Athletic on Tuesday night.
The event had been scheduled as a replacement for the 2026 All-Star Weekend, which had previously been awarded to the New York Islanders.
The 2027 All-Star Weekend is now slated to take place at UBS Arena instead.
Since Olympic charter flights to Milan will be departing from the New York area, and because the Islanders had been promised an event in February 2026, the possibility of doing a big press availability was discussed as an alternative. Ultimately, the NHL and NHL Players’ Association decided to allow everyone to focus on traveling to Italy and not hold an event, according to league sources.
The schedule jostling is related directly to the smashing success of the 4 Nations Face-Off, which delivered massive ratings for the NHL in February 2025 and caused the league to reconsider how it approaches All-Star Games.
“We’re reevaluating how we want to do things because I think we’ve raised the bar about as high as you can for an All-Star Game in any sport,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman told reporters in March. “So we want to make sure whatever we do is up to the standards that we’ve created.”
The NBA has made changes to its All-Star format in recent months, citing the NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off.
The NHL will pause its season from Feb. 6 to 24 to allow players to return to the Olympics for the first time in 12 years.
ESPN’s Emily Kaplan was first to report on the cancellation of the event.
Oct 22, 2025
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