Faceoff Factor

Lacing Up with Ash and Stoosh - 08.15.08

Ashley Gallant | National Hockey League

Aug 15, 10:58 AM | Hype this story!

Ash: The Summer Olympics kicked off Friday in Beijing with plenty of celebrities in attendance. I’m not just talking about the famous actors and musicians who hope to be seen – I’m talking about athletes. Sure, there will always be the famous amateur athletes parading into the stadiums, guys like Michael Phelps for the States or Adam van Koeverden for Canada, but we are seeing more professional athletes suit up for their countries and go for Olympic gold. Yao Ming led the Chinese team into the ‘Bird’s Nest’ Friday night, Dirk Nowitzki led the Germans, Kobe Bryant was shown with the American team – you get the idea.

There is a group of people who believe that the Olympics should only be for amateur athletes and that the pros should stay away. Furthermore, some professional teams would rather not see their players in international competition because of the possibility of injuries. For instance, we saw Jeff Halpern sustain a serious knee injury at the 2008 World Championships and Dominik Hasek injured his groin at the 2006 Torino Games. Should professional athletes – such as NHL players – be allowed to compete at Olympic Games?

Stoosh: The celebrities and dignitaries are always fun to watch during the Opening Ceremonies. At one point, NBC showed George Bush during the Parade of Nations – one of my favorite parts of the Games – and he looked about as excited as someone sitting through the sixth inning of a Wednesday night Pirates-Nationals game in the middle of August.

As to the original topic, yikes. It’s tough because I can easily see both sides of the argument, but I love this topic because if you ask a lot of Americans who follow the Olympics, you might be hard-pressed to find a more polarizing issue.

For a long time, the United States and Canada refused to send “professionals” like NHL and NBA players to the Games. Americans were sending college kids in both hockey and basketball, while Canada was sending amateur juniors to play against athletes who were considered “amateurs” only because they didn’t play in the NHL or NBA; many of these opposing athletes were professionals paid to play in the higher-echelon leagues of their respective countries. It wasn’t until the first incarnation of the “Dream Team” in 1992 that the US began sending pros in basketball, and hockey had to wait until 1998 when the NHL made the decision to allow its players to participate in the Games.

It’s a tough issue to balance because there are so many perspectives and interests to consider. Let’s start with the fans. The fans want their country’s teams to be competitive, of course. In the States, there also seems to be this desire and effort to create a nice story at the same time. Fans don’t just want something to cheer for; they want something to romanticize. Call it the Miracle on Ice Effect (despite the fact that such circumstances will likely NEVER come together for US fans like that again). And it’s always easier to romanticize a team full of unknown kids who aren’t being paid outrageous sums of money to play the game (at least not yet).

So keeping pros out of the games is an attractive proposition because it increases the underdog quotient for our country’s teams. But is that what the focus should be?

Ash: It’s funny that you said that fans want something to romanticize when it comes to the Olympics. I was just thinking about how fans want their Olympic athletes to be like artists – poor and starving. I guess it makes for a better story when you see someone with nothing struggle and come out victorious on the world stage.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good underdog story. I love to see athletes come back from a devastating injury and compete at the highest level. I love to see athletes shock the world and win it all when they weren’t expected to make it out of the preliminaries. Those stories are great and will always be a part of the Olympics, even if some of the athletes make more money than I ever will in my life.

For me, the Summer and Winter Olympic Games are the biggest sporting competitions in the world. Bigger than the Stanley Cup, the World Cup, the World Series, the NBA Championships – bigger than everything. I have such tremendous respect for the Olympics and everything they stand for that I want to see only the best athletes compete for gold, period. I feel that the Games are somewhat cheapened when the pros are not allowed to compete. How can one claim to be the best in the world after winning Olympic gold when not all of the world’s best athletes are allowed to compete? Maybe all those Soviet hockey teams that won gold should have asterisks on their medals.

I also find it odd that some people make such a fuss over NHL and NBA players being allowed to compete at the Games, yet nothing is said when other professional athletes compete. Tennis players, marathoners, triathletes – they all have the opportunity to make a lot of money through competition and sponsorships, yet nobody seems to mind when Roger Federer, the Williams sisters, or Paula Radcliffe compete at the Olympics.

Stoosh: I’m glad you mentioned about what the Olympics mean to you because I think it’s a sentiment that unfortunately is not shared as much here in the States. There is a healthy respect on the part of most Americans for everything the Olympics stands for, no doubt. But if you ask most American sports fans, they will tell you that would rather see their favorite athletes win a championship in their respective sports league than they would see that athlete win a gold medal at the Games for their country.

And guess what? If you ask many American-born pro athletes who have the opportunity to compete in the Olympics in their sport, they would secretly tell you the same thing. For whatever reason, a gold medal at the Games is not considered to be the pinnacle of the career of a professional athlete. International competitions that use pro athletes are almost viewed here in the States as glorified exhibitions.

That’s not to say it’s not a big deal; many pro athletes who make millions of dollars have been reduced to blubbering piles of tears on the medal stand. But most American-born pro athletes chase the money and they chase league championships long before they chase gold medals. Put it this way…you’ll never hear the same amount of outrage over an athlete getting passed over for an Olympic team as you do every year for players getting passed over for an All-Star Game (talk about your irony when it comes to glorified exhibition games).

So why do I come down on the side that says pros should be included in the Games in certain sports? Didn’t I just basically put forth the argument that some say it doesn’t mean as much to highly-paid pro athletes? Maybe I did. But first, until we can actually read minds, there’s no proof whatsoever that such a thing is true. And second, since when is intrinsic value of a medal a prerequisite to the inclusion of an athlete on his nation’s team?

Some will tell you that the inclusion of pros in the Games is merely a mechanism by which the respective leagues can sell their game. So what, I say. That’s called capitalism, and globalizing the sports doesn’t seem to be such a bad thing. Pros are good for the Olympics because they raise the bar. You said so earlier – the Olympic Games are about bringing together the best in athletic competition.

Now, perhaps some of the perception of the inclusion of professionals in the Games was soured by the spectacle that was the first USA “Dream Team” in mens’ hoops; that was more of a circus than a legitimate competition. But imagine what Vancouver is going to be like in 2010 with Sidney Crosby, Vincent Lecavalier and Roberto Luongo leading Team Canada onto the ice against a Russian team that sports Evgeni Malkin, Alex Ovechkin and Nikita Filatov. Now imagine, instead, a team of US or Canadian-born juniors skating out there against that same Russian team. Now imagine the drop-off in the quality of the hockey that you would see between those scenarios, and I think you see my point.

Ash: Yeah, having teams of Canadian and American junior players compete against Russian superstars in 2010 would hardly be competitive. You could look at it from another point of view; imagine if you took the Canadian team from the 2008 World Juniors and put them up against the Russian team from the 2008 World Championships, each team having won gold in their respective tournaments. Sure, that Russian team had Ovechkin, Kovalchuk and Nabokov, among other NHL stars, but about half of those guys played in the Russian Super League. Or maybe take the Swedish team from the 2008 WC, a team made up almost entirely of players from the Swedish League, and put them in the 2010 Games. The point is that, even though that group of Canadian kids was good, they just wouldn’t stand up against the European teams.

Let’s say all professional hockey players were banned from the Olympics, including those playing in Sweden, Germany, Finland, Russia, the Czech Republic and so on. All that would be left would be junior players – good for their age group, but hardly the best talent in the world.

If the International Olympic Committee decided to ban professional athletes from the Games, or if the NHL decided to not release their athletes for the Olympics, I believe that you could see hockey (and other sports) go the way of baseball. Baseball will no longer be an Olympic sport after the Beijing Games (they could apply for re-instatement for 2016), and I believe that a big part of the reason why it is being dropped from the program is because the best players in the world are not able to compete. MLB does not release its players, so teams are comprised of retirees or minor leaguers. In my opinion, the games would be a lot more interesting if you had Jason Bay and Justin Morneau playing against Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter.

It’s really too bad that American players and fans value championships over Olympic gold to the degree that they wouldn’t care if pro athletes were able to compete in the Games. As you said, the globalization of sports is not a bad thing at all. Sports is one thing that brings people together, and the Olympic Games is the biggest stage. Why not showcase the best of the best in front of a global audience?