SOCHI, Russia — Zdeno Chara is the captain of the Boston Bruins. He is making $8 million to play in the NHL this season. And he doesn’t take it lightly. When Slovakia asked him to carry the flag in the Opening Ceremony of the Sochi Olympics, he knew he would have to leave early to do it. He talked to teammates. He talked to his coach and his general manager, who talked to the owner.

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Eventually the Bruins came back with a question: Was it important to him?

“Of course,” he told them. “It’s a huge honor.”

And so they gave him their blessing. He missed a 3-2 overtime loss to the St. Louis Blues on Thursday night, the kind of game in which a Norris Trophy defenseman might have made a difference. He arrived in Sochi on Friday and ducked into the door at Slovak Point, a refuge for Slovak athletes in a train station one stop from Olympic Park, and held a quick press conference in Slovak and English. He carried the flag for Slovakia on Friday night, and he will miss a game for the Bruins against the Ottawa Senators on Saturday, too.

“I can’t thank them enough,” Chara said of the Bruins, wearing a red, white and blue Slovak jacket instead of black and gold. “Honestly, it’s a dream come true.”

This is what the Olympics mean to the players. This is also why the Olympics are a dilemma for the owners – why there was a battle over coming to Sochi and why there will be a battle over Pyeongchang in 2018. Bruins owner Jeremy Jacobs let Chara go early out of respect. But do you think he likes Chara playing elsewhere at all – risking injury, draining his 36-year-old batteries – let alone missing two games for a ceremony?

“If I had my way, we’d never go to the Olympics,” Philadelphia Flyers chairman Ed Snider said Thursday night.

Snider said he wouldn’t go to the Olympics even if they were in Philadelphia. He noted the NHL was the only league to interrupt its season for the Olympics. He called them ridiculous. He said he hated them.

“There’s no benefit to us whatsoever. If anything, I can only see negatives,” Snider said. “The players wanted to play, and the league agreed. But as an owner, I personally don’t like it. It’s not good for our fans. It’s not good for our league. It changes the momentum. Everything about it is wrong.”

You can pick apart Snider’s comments. Sports leagues around the world interrupt their seasons for international competition all the time. The NHL’s owners interrupted the 2012-13 season for a lockout, and the league bounced back as if nothing happened. The Olympics might be bad for some fans in a narrow sense, if they directly hurt those fans’ favorite team somehow, but generally the Olympics please hardcore hockey fans and attract more casual sports fans to hockey than any other event. How is that bad for the league?

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