By Andrew Chong /
The impact of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games on the NHL’s post-season will soon be determined.
There are three basic schools of thought on what exactly the impact will be:
No teams will be impacted.
Some teams will be impacted.
Many teams will be impacted.
The second school of thought seems to be the most realistic.
In a column written earlier this season, Cam Cole of the Vancouver Sun pointed to the 2006 Games in Turin to reveal the potential impact of a post-Olympic letdown.
That year, the Detroit Red Wings had five Swedish players (Lidstrom, Zetterberg, Holmstrom, Samuelsson, and Kronwall) battle all the way to a gold medal. Five others also participated in the tournament (Draper, Lang, Datsyuk, Chelios, and Schneider) for a total of 10 Red Wing-Olympians.
In contrast, the Edmonton Oilers sent four players to the Games. When the first round of the NHL playoffs came around, the Oilers knocked out the first-place Red Wings in six games.
Was this upset a coincidence or did the Red Wings suffer an Olympic hangover?
Detroit can’t simply blame the Olympics for their failure. They were beaten. But at the same time, the Oilers probably did benefit at least somewhat from facing a Red Wings team that had most of the top-half of its roster competing in at the highest level for an extra two weeks in the middle of that season.
Of the league’s 30 franchises, 19 teams sent between four and six players to the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic Games. So, to generalize, the majority of teams sent about the same number of players. This suggests that about two-thirds of teams should experience a similar post-Olympic impact.
But what about the teams that send more or less players?
The playoff-cursed San Jose Sharks may run in to more trouble this April, as the Western Conference leaders sent a league-high eight players to Vancouver. In particular, their big line (Heatley-Thornton-Marleau), their best defenceman (Dan Boyle) and their starting goaltender (Evgeni Nabokov) will have their mental and physical endurance tested in the post-season.
Perhaps more than ever, this group will face tremendous pressure to get past the first round—and they will have played a ton of hockey before the playoffs even begin.
If the playoffs began today, the Sharks would take on the eighth-place Calgary Flames in the first round. Coincidentally, the Flames sent a league-low two players to the Games, after Olympic-hopefuls Jay Bouwmeester, Robyn Regehr, and Dion Phaneuf were left off Team Canada’s roster.
Might the well-rested Flames reenact the Alberta-underdog story that the Oilers wrote in 2006?
Meanwhile, the Detroit Red Wings sit tenth in the Western Conference standings and are coming off back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals appearances. With six players competing at the Games, does this aging group have enough to not only make the playoffs, but to go on any kind of run?
In the East, the Tampa Bay Lightning may have perhaps the best three non-Olympians in the league. Steven Stamkos, Martin St. Louis, and Vinny Lecavalier were all on the cusp of making Team Canada, and all three fell just short.
The trio has been resting up during the Games and this could be the boost the ninth-place Bolts need to squeeze into the playoffs in an extremely tight Eastern Conference. Tampa Bay is one of six teams separated by just five points in the standings, with only three playoff spots to go around.
In a league with so much parity, the slightest edge can mean playoff success or failure.
Vancouver’s “summery” Winter Games could mean early summers for some NHL teams. |
