The National Hockey League will not participate in the 2018 Olympic Winter Games, it was announced by the league.

“The IIHF is deeply disappointed to hear of Commissioner Bettman's decision not to have National Hockey League players take part in the 2018 Olympic Winter Games,” said IIHF President René Fasel.

“While we respect the NHL’s reasons for not taking part, there is no hiding the fact that this is a decision that robs ice hockey fans of the world's greatest best-on-best international ice hockey competition, and our sport of a truly global platform that has been in place since 1998. At the end of the day, ice hockey loses here.”

Following the IOC's decision not to cover costs such as insurance and travel for the NHL players, the IIHF worked to find a common ground that would have encouraged the NHL to continue to be a part of the Olympics.

In light of the NHL’s refusal to participate in the 2018 Olympic Winter Games, the IIHF will discuss with the participating teams the best way forward and move on with preparations for PyeongChang 2018.

“We have to remember that some of the greatest Olympic moments didn’t involve NHL players at all,” said Fasel. “We will move forward and continue preparations for PyeongChang. We still have the task to promote and build our game in Asia, and we will work hard towards this.”

The NHL made the announcement to remove the Olympics from next year’s schedule on Monday:

"We have previously made clear that while the overwhelming majority of our clubs are adamantly opposed to disrupting the 2017-18 NHL season for purposes of accommodating Olympic participation by some NHL players, we were open to hearing from any of the other parties who might have an interest in the issue (e.g., the IOC, the IIHF, the NHLPA, etc.) as to reasons the Board of Governors might be interested in re-evaluating their strongly held views on the subject," the NHL said in a statement.

"A number of months have now passed and no meaningful dialogue has materialized. Instead, the IOC has now expressed the position that the NHL's participation in Beijing in 2022 is conditioned on our participation in South Korea in 2018. And the NHLPA has now publicly confirmed that it has no interest or intention of engaging in any discussion that might make Olympic participation more attractive to the clubs. As a result, and in an effort to create clarity among conflicting reports and erroneous speculation, this will confirm our intention to proceed with finalizing our 2017-18 regular season schedule without any break to accommodate the Olympic Winter Games. We now consider the matter officially closed."

The NHL also cited player fatigue and a compressed schedule as other reasons for the decision to opt out of Olympic participation. The IOC’s implied conditions that participation in the Beijing 2022 Olympic Games hinging on 2018 was also a factor.

However, the National Hockey League Players’ Association came out with a statement of its own, saying that its players “are extraordinarily disappointed and adamantly disagree with the NHL's shortsighted decision to not continue our participation in the Olympics.”

"Any sort of inconvenience the Olympics may cause to next season's schedule is a small price to pay compared to the opportunity to showcase our game and our greatest players on this enormous international stage.”

“A unique opportunity lies ahead with the 2018 and 2022 Olympics in Asia. The NHL may believe it is penalizing the IOC or the players, or both, for not giving the owners some meaningful concessions in order to induce them to agree to go to PyeongChang. Instead this impedes the growth of our great game by walking away from an opportunity to reach sports fans worldwide.”

The International Olympic Committee released the following statement:

“This must be a huge disappointment for the players who definitely wanted to play at the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018. The IOC feels very sorry for the athletes.

“The decision is even more regrettable, as the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) had offered the same conditions to the NHL as at previous Olympic Games, where the insurance and travel costs were covered.

“The IOC, which distributes 90 per cent of its revenue for the development of sport in the world, obviously cannot treat a national commercial league better than not-for-profit International Sports Federations which are developing sport globally.

“The ice hockey tournament at the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018 will nonetheless be a very exciting one, because the players from all the other professional ice hockey leagues will participate, and will be very much welcomed by their Olympic teams.”