NHL.com staff writer Mike Zeisberger has been covering the NHL regularly since 1999. Each Monday he will use his extensive network of hockey contacts for his weekly notes column, "Zizing 'Em Up," to preview the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026.
TORONTO -- In a normal year -- at least as normal as it gets when you live in the always-fluid world that goes with being the Deputy Commissioner of the NHL -- Bill Daly would have taken a brief break from the world of pucks and pokechecks to attend the Super Bowl.
Except there is nothing normal about this year, at least in a hockey sense.
Indeed, NHL players are participating at the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026, the first time they’ll compete in the Games in 12 years. The tournament begins Wednesday and runs through Feb. 22, the date of the gold medal game.
“No Super Bowl for me this year. It’s off to Milan,” Daly said this weekend. “It’s going to be exciting for the sport. I think we have the chance to see a level of hockey we’ve never seen before.”
Daly says the NHL is an “invited guest” of the International Ice Hockey Federation and the International Olympic Committee. At the same time, the League is helping out in various ways including in the categories of officiating and on-ice discipline.
In a casual State of the Union address with NHL.com, Daly took time to discuss all things Olympics, the impact the 4 Nations Face-Off had as an adrenalin shot for the sport in the countdown to Italy, and the riveting post-Olympic Stanley Cup Playoff races that loom in March and April.
First off, with the men’s Olympic hockey competition starting Wednesday, can you describe the product you think the sports world is about to see?
“I'm really excited, and I expected to be excited. But I'll tell you, as we get closer and closer and the months whittled down to weeks whittled down to days until the first puck is dropped, when you think about the collection of talent that's going to be on the ice and the quality of competition in that tournament, it's going to be like something, like I said, we've never seen before. And that excites me, but that’s not the only thing that has me pumped.”
What else?
“I know we played our last regular-season games last [Thursday] before the break, and kind of turned the page on that that part of the regular season. But we’ve got some really exciting things left in the season, including this tournament coming up. To be in a position to assess this kind of the season as a whole until we get to the end of it, well, I'm really curious as to how it all plays out.”
It’s easy to see how the 4 Nations Face-Off last February really fueled the appetite of the fans and players alike for best-on-best hockey with its intensity, drama and elite play. Could you have ever imagined the impact that tournament would have, especially as a catapult to the Olympics?
“Look, a lot of people didn't know what it was or what it was going to be. I myself wasn’t sure what it was going to be, because I'd never seen anything like it before. And, you know, it started as a vision for a World Cup, not in the winter of 2025 but in the winter of ‘24. We just couldn’t pull that off in that time frame, you know, for a host of reasons, including IIHF resistance, things like that. So, it turned into what it was. We definitely wanted to get on the ice and have a real international competition before we were going to the Olympics in ’26, and that became really our only feasible option at the time. Having said that, you know, I live with the Players’ Association every day, and I know what their passion for international competition is and what their passion to represent their countries and homelands are. And so, I knew this was going to be a very high-level competition. I think where we got fortunate, probably, is, well, I’m not sure I wasn't in a minority in knowing what this competition was going to be like, because I think most people expected something along the lines of a typical kind of All-Star type tournament; it was the farthest thing from that. And so, I mean, look, we got a couple breaks along the way. The politics at the time played into it, we got great games and we got, for the North American audience, a pretty cool Final involving the U.S. and Canada. So, you know, everything broke right, but it was destined to be a major success. And I think it certainly heightened the anticipation and the level of excitement for this upcoming Olympic tournament.”
While on the subject of the Olympic tournament, how is the NHL contributing to the event aside from supplying players?
“I mean, there are certain areas where, traditionally, you know, when we participated in the Olympics, we've gotten a seat at the table here and that’s it. This time, probably on the officiating side, we probably have more influence and participation than we probably ever had before. We're sending or have sent seven of our referees and six of our linesmen to Milan. And we participate equally on a kind of an officiating committee that makes decisions with respect to which officials to assign to particular games. And you know, I think at the end of the day, our director of officiating, Stephen Walkom, has done a great job really galvanizing the whole officiating community internationally. The IIHF and the NHL, we had a training camp in the offseason so that all the officials kind of got to know each other, got comfortable with each other. They went over the rule book and the areas of difference and areas of same. Now, that's evolved a lot over the years, and the IIHF has really transitioned into something that looks very much like the NHL rulebook with very few exceptions. So, I think the consistency in rules is something that also benefits the game. Obviously, the fact that we can play on North American-sized ice benefits the game and certainly benefits the participation of NHL players in the game. For certain, we have a seat at the table. Our head of player safety, George Parros, will be kind of be the head of player safety, supplementary discipline and the like at this tournament, so we have a real say in that. We have an observer role on the tournament directorate, which is kind of made up of representatives of each country participating in the tournament, we get to sit in and participate in those discussions on a regular basis. So, I think clearly in those areas we certainly have influence in how this tournament will play out.”
