You can blame Gary Bettman for a lot of things, if you’re so inclined. The game of hockey has deteriorated under his watch; he lost a season to labour strife, and half of two others. The league has been small-minded on so many fronts, and there is not a lot of evident vision. Never has been, really.

To that, you can now add the Olympics. The National Hockey League finally ended negotiations on Monday, formally announcing that the league will not participate in the Olympics for the first time since 1994. The NHL apparently didn’t want to overshadow the playoffs, which start in a little more than a week, which is maybe enough time for the anger to die down.

Because this is a narrow-minded decision, fuelled by the owners and carried out by their commissioner. There is plenty of blame, of course. The International Olympic Committee paid the insurance and travel costs to Sochi, then withdrew that money for Pyeongchang, South Korea, leaving a gap of between $15 million and $20 million U.S. When the NHL tried to find a compromise, the IOC did not budge. The IOC started this. The IOC failed.

But the NHL will wear this, and deserves to wear this. The league believes it isn’t helped by a South Korean Olympics. The other parties hardened in negotiations, with the IOC threatening to withhold participation in the 2022 Games in Beijing, and the players refusing to budge. Owners, meanwhile, only cared about their businesses. Hockey is a regional game in the United States, and in some ways in Canada. Owners don’t often think big unless they’re trying to get public arena-building money. As far as the hockey goes, they think small.

But the insurance money was eventually covered by the International Ice Hockey Federation, and the NHL balked at that, because of a perceived bleeding of money for hockey development. Bettman proposed an extension to a collective bargaining agreement in exchange for Olympic participation, as part of a formalized international calendar that included a Ryder Cup-like series and World Cups, and it went nowhere. He floated an elimination of the opt-out clause that would allow players to terminate the CBA in 2020 rather than 2022, but it was never formally presented to the union. Hope you’re ready for another lockout, if it comes to that.

The NHL has always said it couldn’t measure positives from the NHL’s participation in the Olympics, unlike, say, a league-run World Cup. But there was clearly a price. The owners just set it too high, and nobody moved to meet it.

Now, maybe it’s not over. The NHL cancelled the 2004-05 season, then nearly resurrected it on its deathbed. Maybe some combination of the IOC, the IIHF, NBC and the NHLPA — fat chance on that last one, I’d say — can come together and salvage this.

But it seems unlikely, and it’s a shame. The NHL doesn’t think this affects China in 2022, but it could, if the IOC is vindictive enough. But for now the players lose because they didn’t ensure Olympic participation stayed a part of a collective bargaining agreement, and have now been reminded for whom they work. Sidney Crosby, for instance, might never play in an Olympics again. The NHLPA statement was just short of open fury.

“The players are extraordinarily disappointed and adamantly disagree with the NHL’s shortsighted decision to not continue our participation in the Olympics,” it read. “The league’s efforts to blame others for its decision is as unfortunate as the decision itself. NHL players are patriotic and they do not take this lightly. A decent respect for the opinions of the players matters. This is the NHL’s decision, and its alone. It is very unfortunate for the game, the players and millions of loyal hockey fans.”

Maybe more players will follow Alex Ovechkin’s lead, and try to go no matter what, but the NHL privately believes it has enough levers to keep players home. The union believes the league will take away the ability of owners — like Washington’s Ted Leonsis, who was not opposed to Ovechkin’s participation — to let players go.

You know who really loses? Hockey. The first edition of the World Cup wasn’t a replacement, for the players or anyone else. These Olympics will be broadcast in China. The union and league just completed a joint trip there to drum up business and announced games in China. The Olympics are the biggest global stage there is.

But so much of hockey thinks small. It’s the NBA that has offices all over the globe. It’s the NBA, the inexpensive game, that chases the world. In this NHL scoring remains anemic, fan-pleasing violence has been reduced to little trickles, the players’ personalities remain hidden, the trade market is more frozen than ever and the limits of this league’s imagination apparently extends to outdoor games, 3-on-3 overtime and smaller goalie pants. Now, the Olympics are gone, for now.

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Add the IOC’s rent-seeking mentality and owners with a plantation mindset and you get angry players and angry fans — and a league whose owners didn’t care enough about either one. Maybe that anger won’t amount to much; in Canada especially, we lap up whatever the NHL gives us, year after year. Maybe, in a self-interested way, the owners were right to do this, and Bettman was right to carry it out.

But time and again, it comes back to the same thing: Hockey could be bigger, and hockey could be better, but hockey keeps getting in the way.

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