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The NHL’s top players won’t be making a stop at UBS Arena on the way to the 2026 Winter Olympics. The league has canceled its planned send-off event, which had been scheduled to take place during the mid-season break in February before players depart for the Olympics in Italy.
In May, the NHL said it would create an international event on Long Island to replace the 2026 All-Star Game after it announced players could return to the Olympics for the first time since the 2014 Games in Sochi. On Tuesday, ESPN reported the league has cancelled the substitute event.
The NHL’s initial announcement that it would pivot from the planned 2026 All-Star Game didn’t sit well with New York governor Kathy Hochul, who sent a letter to NHL commissioner Gary Bettman expressing her disappointment. She emphasized that the league had made the decision to cancel the event without consulting the state, and requested it create a replacement with “equal or great economic activity and cultural value.”
UBS Arena will now host the 2027 All-Star Game and skills competition.
It will be the NHL’s first traditional all-star format since 2024. Last year’s All-Star Game was replaced by the wildly successful 4 Nations Face-Off, an international tournament that gathered top players from Canada, the U.S., Sweden, and Finland. Many of the participants will represent their teams in the Olympics.
NHL players, who hail from more than 20 countries, have increasingly pushed to return to international competition. “We’re very happy with the fact that the players are getting to go back to the Olympics,” Islanders co-owner Jon Ledecky said at Front Office Sports’s Tuned In event. “That was probably the most important part of the CBA—for many of them to represent their countries.”
The Islanders declined a request for comment Wednesday morning.
The 2026 Olympics kicks off a new calendar of international best-on-best competition every other year with the return of the World Cup of Hockey in 2028, which will be played quadrennially. The NHL is coming off a huge year in which the league saw record revenue of $7 billion and reached a new four-year collective bargaining agreement with the NHLPA.
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