Chris O'Meara / AP

NHL stars such as such as Alexander Ovechkin, now playing for Russia, belong in the Olympics, writes Johnette Howard.

Johnette Howard

Not to slight the overachieving hockey players that landed tiny Bemidji State in the Frozen Four or those Boston-area college teams that point to the Beanpot Tournament every season, but NHL commissioner Gary Bettman can’t be serious about turning back the clock and giving the Winter Olympics hockey tournament back to them or some assorted minor leaguers every four years.

What is it with this guy and killing things? Does Bettman want to go down in history as the Kevorkian of hockey?

Bettman is the same man who in 2005 presided over the canceling of an entire NHL season when the league and the players union couldn’t agree on a new collective bargaining agreement.

You might remember all that. I don’t.

I blanked out right after writing an angry column saying the whole damn bunch of them — the league, the players and their union officials — should resume their labor talks on some iceberg in the Bering Straits. Someplace far, far away, where the only sounds would be the barking of seals, the squawking of penguins, the howl of the Arctic wind. After two pathetic last-ditch efforts to avoid killing the season failed in the space of three days, I didn’t want to be bothered with the details anymore, or the NHL’s breast-beating histrionics. Just shut up, go away, and let us know when the NHL was coming back.

That was five years ago this week, and the truth is, the league never really recovered even the tenuous place it held in the American sports fans’ consciousness before the shutdown. ESPN opted out of its NHL contract and the league’s game telecasts initially disappeared to OLN, which later became Versus, embedded among shows that teach you how to camouflage yourself to look like swamp grass while duck hunting. More recently, the NHL’s Phoenix franchise was sold after much squabbling that left Wayne Gretzky — the Mr. Hockey of our lifetime — without an NHL job. There’s plenty other examples, but why pile on?

On Monday, Bettman gave an interview to NHL.com claiming that the league has enjoyed “four years of record attendance and record revenues” in the U.S., but that’s only notable if previous revenues were at meaningful levels in the first place.

In his next breath, even Bettman admitted, “We're a pretty well-kept secret in some parts of the United States. But that secret is getting revealed to more and more people over time.”

Abandoning the Olympics is a funny way of getting the word out.

The Winter Olympics have been rightly called the best hockey tournament in the world since NHL players began participating in 1998. Thuggery isn’t tolerated, which only helps highlight the thrilling skating and speed, stunning playmaking and breathless end-to-end rushes. And all of it plays out only every four years against a backdrop of nationalistic fervor, with players who are NHL teammates going at each other like blood rivals on Olympic ice.

In other words, you can’t beat it.

Yet Bettman arrived at the Vancouver Winter Olympics last week saying the NHL hadn’t quite decided whether to continue participating in the Games when they move to Sochi, Russia in 2014.

Nor did Bettman change his position after one of his sport’s most thrilling days of competition in years — Sunday’s terrific Olympic showdowns between natural rivals Russia and the Czech Republic, Sweden and its neighbor Finland, and Team USA in its 5-3 upset of gold-medal hopeful Canada — were still making headlines around the world.

“We'll take a deep breath after this experience and figure out whether or not it makes sense for us to go to the next Olympics,” Bettman droned.

Just call him the Human Buzz Kill.

Bettman always has prompted gripes that he’s an autocrat who never has had a feel for the soul of the game. When it comes to the Olympics, he’s particularly tone deaf.

Many things about the NHL’s participation are inconvenient for the NHL — I’ll give Bettman that. NHL teams understandably worry their star players will get hurt or come back for their playoff pushes exhausted from a brutally compressed Olympic schedule.

Bettman also emphasizes how the timing of the Games forces the league to shut down for two weeks just when the NHL theoretically has the North American sports stage to itself right after the Super Bowl, but before baseball or the NCAA Tournament hit full stride. And there’s speculation the commissioner might be non-committal about 2014 because he can use the players’ Olympic interest as a bargaining chip in upcoming labor talks.

But how much is the NHL’s profile really raised during that supposed golden window of opportunity in non-Olympic years? I’ll tell you how much: Nada. Nyet. Or as they say in Moose Jaw, Not tat t’all.

What Bettman should be looking at is the rapt attention hockey is enjoying because of the Olympics. Canada’s devastating defeat to the U.S. left the host country on pins and needles about Tuesday’s win-or-go-home game against Germany. Team USA is playing in throwback jerseys like the ones the 1960 U.S. team wore on its way to a gold medal they weren’t supposed to win, either. And the magic is back.

Olympic hockey has overtaken everything else as the best story of these Games.

And there stands Bettman, warning this could be it?

Somebody needs to get some of that tape the players wrap around their sticks and muzzle this man. The Olympics pull in a bigger audience and charm more casual hockey fans than the Stanley Cup playoffs.

So quit the hemming and hawing already, Commissioner.

Step up and say that when they light the flame at the 2014 Winter Games and beyond, the NHL would be crazy not to come back.

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