from Craig Custance of ESPN,
The NHL announced this week that it won't send players to the 2018 Winter Olympics and the league is still dealing with a concussion lawsuit. On both fronts, Walsh isn't thrilled with the decision-making at the NHL's highest levels.
I chatted with him about these topics -- and a few others -- during a phone conversation on Tuesday. (Note: the text has been edited for length).
ESPN.com: Let's dive right into the Olympic debate. What kind of reaction did you get during conversations with your players?
Walsh: The players are disappointed ... we have a lot of clients who expected to be Olympic-bound. Those who were Olympic-bound are very disappointed. The general feeling among all players, whether they expected to play in the Olympics or not, is that the Olympics are good for hockey.
I don't agree with the narrative that the NHL gets nothing out of it. You have the unprecedented situation, never to be seen again probably in our lifetimes, where you have two Olympics within four years of each other in Asia, an area the NHL has targeted for future growth. To turn around now and say, "We're not going to South Korea because we don't get anything out of it," is so shortsighted. It's mind-boggling.
ESPN.com: The league argues that it hasn't found a metric that shows a quantifiable benefit from playing in the Olympics. Where do you see the benefit? Are there hard numbers you can track?
Walsh: Some of our greatest memories, going back the last five Olympics, have become ingrained inside hockey lore. Take the Czechs' dramatic win in Nagano. I happened to be back in Prague when the Czech team arrived and went and celebrated in Old Town Square, where a half a million people inside the Czech Republic were chanting and cheering. They said it was the largest crowd since the Velvet Revolution. That's not bad for hockey....
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