from Rick Westhead of TSN,

An executive with China's public broadcaster CCTV says the NHL has pledged to continue to send its players to the Olympics if China wins the right to host the 2022 Olympic Games.

Longmou Li, who has negotiated broadcast rights of National Hockey League games in the world's biggest country, said in an interview that NHL officials have told him that they'd use a China-based winter games to build up the league's popularity in the important emerging market.

An NHL spokesman said it's "categorically not true" that any promise has been made to Chinese broadcasters or hockey federation officials. "No such discussions have taken place," he said. "We have heard that is CCTV's desire, but we have had no discussions and made no decisions."...

Beijing is considered a favourite to win those games after Oslo, Stockholm, Munich, two cities in Switzerland, Denver, Krakow and Lviv in Ukraine all dropped out of the bidding. The only other candidate is Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Since the NBA All Star break, Chinese officials have held several meetings with NHL executives in New York to begin making the case for the NHL to send players to the Olympics, said a person familiar with the matter.

read on