Even before Marty Walsh took the job as head of the NHL Players’ Association, he started to hear the same refrain. In interviews for the job, he’d ask players about their priorities. Get us back into best-on-best competition and back into the Olympics, he was told. After skipping the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, the NHL had come close to a return in 2022. Contracts were signed, the league’s calendar included a long break in February for players to go to Beijing. The pandemic, and subsequent