The NHL and Its Fans Will Both Reap the Benefits of the Word Cup of Hockey

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Money means the world to the NHL.

That's the cynical person's opening line for a story about the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, which was jointly announced by the NHL and NHLPA Saturday at Nationwide Arena, site of this season's All-Star Game. The sport's most talented players will convene in Toronto at the end of September for a two-week tournament that will provide a new stream—sorry, an avalanche—of revenue for everyone involved.

"We’ve grown to a $4 billion business," NHL COO John Collins said. "The question now becomes, where does the next billion come from?"

You can almost see the dollar signs in Collins' eyes as you read that, but geez, who cares?

The World Cup is going to be fun for everyone.

Here are the basics:

• There will be eight teams participating in round-robin play and later a knockout round: United States, Canada, Czech Republic, Russia, Finland, Sweden, an All-Star team cobbled together from leftover European players and a team comprised of North America's best 23-and-under players. Future events could see a different format, with more national teams going through qualifying as to replace the slapped-together teams in this incarnation.

• The 23-and-under players are only eligible for that team, not their country's squad. The birthday cutoff will be September 1, 2016. 

• There is still no television deal in place to broadcast that event, but NHL Deputy Commissioner Bill Daly said that will be sorted out soon, perhaps in the next few weeks.

• How this affects training camp and the start date for the 2016-17 season is undecided. It's possible the season will start later or the schedule will be compressed but that remains up in the air. Daly said with a best-of-three final that can end later than Oct. 1, most players will be back with their NHL teams before preseason is over.

• The money from this event will have no bearing on the salary cap, as it won't be part of hockey-related revenue.

• Each national team must have 16 players (two goaltenders) announced by March 1, 2016; the rest of the team must be declared no later than June 1, 2016. The young guns and international-men-of-mystery squad will be selected by a to-be-determined management group assembled by the NHL and NHLPA.

Let's be clear—this isn't the Olympics, something to which Patrice Bergeron alluded during the press conference Saturday. But that's a pretty high bar to set for judging whether something is a good idea or an exciting format for a sports tournament. This will be a best-on-best tournament played at reasonable hours on North American soil, which also minimizes travel that occurred at past World Cups.

"I can’t say enough about the experiences that I lived in Sochi and also in Vancouver, something I’ll never forget," Bergeron said. "The Olympics is the biggest stage in sport, so definitely players I think want to be there, but at the same time, the World Cup of Hockey is something that I’m really happy that’s coming back."

And won't it be nice for the people of Toronto to see two weeks of quality hockey at Air Canada Centre? Aren't they owed that after all these years? Look into your hearts, people.

The NHL hasn't ruled out participating in the 2018 Olympics in South Korea, although commissioner Gary Bettman said this could be the foundation for other future international events. The league will make significantly more money by running its own event, so if the players can find similar meaning in a World Cup that they see in the Olympics, maybe that hunger to go to South Korea will wane before 2018.

There are a couple minor problems with a World Cup, however:

• How is the under-23 team going to win a game? It's tough to project who will be both good enough for the team and still under 23 by the time we get to 2016, but there's an inherent danger in icing a team with mostly undersized players (not looking at you, Brandon Saad and Aaron Ekblad) against teams of full-grown men. Potential goaltenders for that team include John Gibson and...Malcolm Subban?

• Remember the outcry from the Islanders after John Tavares got hurt in Sochi? I doubt Garth Snow will care that the NHL is looking to find another billion dollars in revenue if that happens again.

The good outweighs the bad here, which is rarely the case for the NHL. 

So embrace this and enjoy spending the next 18 months projecting teams.

All statistics via NHL.com and Stats.HockeyAnalysis.com.

Dave Lozo covers the NHL for Bleacher Report. You can follow him on Twitter: @DaveLozo.