NHL players to be pulled from Olympics

An official announcement is expected within 24 hours.

An agreement to keep the players home was made jointly by the league and the NHL Players Association against a backdrop of rising COVID-19 cases worldwide.

Effective Wednesday, the league will be on pause through December 26, with no games or practices and team facilities closed.

As of Tuesday, 50 NHL games had been postponed this season, and the NHL could use part of the Olympic break for make-up games, ESPN reported.

In their collective bargaining agreement, the NHL and NHLPA agreed to Olympic participation in 2022 and 2026.

The two sides, however, agreed to reconsider NHL players travelling to Beijing if COVID-19 disrupted the 2022 season.

The NHL had until January 10 to withdraw from the February 4-20 Beijing Olympics without financial penalty.

Players had mostly been eager to return to the largest international stage but concerns that a positive test in China could lead to a 21-day quarantine and delay returning to their families and NHL clubs had dampened that enthusiasm for some.

While the NFL revamped their testing protocols and the NHL paused games until Monday, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said on Tuesday there are no plans to halt its schedule - with a 97 per cent vaccination rate and almost two-thirds of the league boosted.

This despite positive tests increasing at an alarming rate and a number of teams heavily impacted by unavailabilities and games being postponed.

Through Tuesday afternoon, at least 82 players from 20 teams were believed to be in the protocols, though those numbers tend to change almost on an hourly basis.

In Europe, German sport reacted with resignation on Tuesday to the government decision to ban fans from all arenas in major leagues and at big events from December 28.

"This is not good news for the whole of professional sport," Cologne managing director Alexander Wehrle said, adding that 1.8 million euros ($2.8m) is lost in revenue per game.

Bundesliga football clubs Bayern Munich and Leipzig had already been playing behind closed doors for weeks due to rising coronavirus cases, while a patchwork of fan restrictions were in place across the rest of Germany.

The Bundesliga is on a mid-season break until January 7.

It is not just football affected, with the less lucrative German basketball and ice hockey leagues to be severely impacted.

The iconic Four Hills ski-jumping tournament, which starts with jumps in the Bavarian ski resorts of Oberstdorf (December 29) and Garmisch-Partenkirchen (January 1) will have to proceed without supporters.

with DPA and AP

Australian Associated Press