ESPN won the exclusive rights to the two-week tournament over NBC, the NHLs current USA broadcast partner.
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“It’s a huge honor for sure”, Kane told reporters in Columbus, where Team USA is holding its training camp.
“It was a cool moment”, Pavelski said.
Patrick Kane and Ryan Suter will serve as alternates. He last played in late November.
It’s called the World Cup of Hockey but with some made-up teams, such as the North America squad (comprised of 23-and-under players) and Team Europe, a hodgepodge of non-hockey powers including the likes of Slovenia, Denmark and Slovakia.
“There are a lot of emotions that go through it”, Pavelski, the captain of the San Jose Sharks, said Wednesday. “It’s a pretty special thing. There’s a number of guys that could do this job”.
The NHL and NHLPA also announced in a statement that pre-game ceremonies for Team Europe will not include any musical tribute.
The 30-year-old Ovechkin was captain when Russian Federation won the world hockey championship in 2014. “It’s a tournament full of different elements, but at the same time, you have one goal and that is to win”. Teammate Eric Reid took a knee with the QB on the sidelines, which inspired USA soccer player Megan Rapinoe to follow suit on Sunday. Additionally, the North American anthem will simply be both the “Star Spangled Banner” and “O Canada” played back-to-back. Especially for a team that lost its captain this offseason, the fact that the Blues will nearly certainly have to wait until after the last game of the best-of-three final on October 1 for their new captain-Alex Pietrangelo of Team Canada-to arrive is troublesome.
Suter gathered the entire US team in Madison last month for a low-key few days of golfing and hanging out. “There has been a lot of talk about their team, and they are going to be good, we all know that”, forward Justin Abdelkader said.
“If you’re here you have to be ready to play and you have to be ready to play from Day 1 and Carey was aware of that when he accepted the invitation”, said Canadian general manager Doug Armstrong following the team’s first practice. “We still have that over any other sports network in the world: the fact that we’re on just about everywhere all the time”.
If they decide it’s not worth sending pros to the Games, the World Cup may be the only global tournament in which hockey fans can see the world’s top talent compete against each other. But he said this tournament enjoys an anticipation level perhaps higher than the Olympics because of its infrequency.
As for that 82-game National Hockey League season, down the road, the World Cuppers aren’t giving it a thought at the moment.
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Just about every goaltender was facing some kind of layoff from last season, he said, whether from the end of the regular season in April or the last Stanley Cup final game in mid-June.
