{"id":495698,"date":"2026-03-10T02:01:54","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T02:01:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/495698\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T02:01:54","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T02:01:54","slug":"nhl-commissioner-wants-to-tweak-olympic-hockey-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/495698\/","title":{"rendered":"NHL commissioner wants to \u2018tweak\u2019 Olympic hockey experience"},"content":{"rendered":"

If the outcome of men\u2019s hockey tournament at the 2026 Winter Olympics didn\u2019t convince NHL<\/a> commissioner Gary Bettman that his league\u2019s participation was a net positive, the weeks since might have.<\/p>\n

Jon Lewis of Sports Media Watch<\/a> reported<\/a> Friday that NHL ratings on national broadcasts are up 23% from pre-Olympic levels. The first eight games on ABC, ESPN and TNT averaged 603,000 viewers, Lewis reported.<\/p>\n

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MORE: NHL commissioner Gary Bettman binge-watched Heated Rivalry; here\u2019s what he thought<\/a><\/p>\n

The NHL saw a similar (but smaller) increase in viewership<\/a> after the Four Nations Face-Off a year ago. Still, even in a tournament that saw the United States defeat Canada in overtime to claim the gold medal, not everything went perfectly to script for Bettman.<\/p>\n

Team Canada captain Sidney Crosby was injured and couldn\u2019t play<\/a> in the final or semifinal games. Swiss defenseman Kevin Fiala suffered an injury<\/a> that ended his season with the Los Angeles Kings.<\/p>\n

The start time of the championship game \u2014 before the sun rose in much of the United States on a Sunday \u2014 was also less than ideal. Bettman said<\/a> the television ratings for the game \u201cwould\u2019ve been twice as high\u201d if it started in the afternoon instead.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s unclear how Bettman could lessen his players\u2019 risk of injury the next time they participate in the Winter Olympics. (The 2030 edition of the Games will be held in France.) But there will be a next time, Bettman said in a new interview with Puck\u2019s John Ourand on The Varsity podcast<\/a> \u2014 possibly with some tweaks.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are things we can tweak the would make this a better experience both for the Olympics and for the NHL and our players,\u201d he told Ourand<\/a>. \u201cSo we have some work to do. But the intention is to continue to go every two years, best on best, whether it\u2019s ours (the Four Nations Face-Off) and the Players\u2019 Association or it\u2019s the Olympics.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The post NHL commissioner wants to \u2018tweak\u2019 Olympic hockey experience<\/a> appeared first on The Big Lead<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the outcome of men\u2019s hockey tournament at the 2026 Winter Olympics didn\u2019t convince NHL commissioner Gary Bettman…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":495699,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[3189,2072,295,34883,5,21166,6067,58620,58664,1270,145,4,5785,768],"class_list":{"0":"post-495698","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-2026-winter-olympics","9":"tag-boston-celtics","10":"tag-gary-bettman","11":"tag-heated-rivalry","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-hockey-tournament","14":"tag-jayson-tatum","15":"tag-joe-burrow","16":"tag-jon-lewis","17":"tag-kevin-fiala","18":"tag-los-angeles-kings","19":"tag-nhl","20":"tag-nhl-commissioner","21":"tag-sidney-crosby"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116202421834469265","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=495698"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495698\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/495699"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=495698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=495698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=495698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}