NHL season put on hold after deal struck to allow players to compete at 2014 Sochi Games

After weeks of tough negotiations, the NHL and its players reached a deal with the International Ice Hockey Federation to put the season on hold again so their biggest stars can compete next year in the Sochi Olympics.

Halting another season one year after the damaging lockout that created a shortened, 48-game campaign was hardly an optimal plan for the NHL. But an agreement was made to allow the top players to take part in their fifth consecutive Olympics.

"Our outstanding athletes take tremendous pride in representing their homelands on the global stage," NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said in a joint announcement with the players' association. "The decision to participate in the XXII Olympic Winter Games in Sochi was in many ways a difficult one, but one that we know will be well received by our players and, most importantly, by the vast majority of our fans and sports fans everywhere."

NHL players first went to the Olympics for the 1998 Nagano Games. Now they will be available to the 12 national teams that will comprise the hockey tournament from February 12-23. More than 120 NHL players are expected to compete in Sochi, while the league takes a break for 21/2 weeks from February 9 to 26.

"You find out pretty quickly that an Olympic-year schedule is a little more condensed and a little more intense than a typical year," Pittsburgh Penguins captain Sidney Crosby said. "You have to take advantage of your days off because it is condensed.

"Playing that condensed schedule then going right into basically a pretty intense play-off atmosphere, every game is like a game seven. Then coming back from that, you basically go from being at that level of intensity to the regular-season games."