Several playoff contenders — the Chicago Blackhawks, the St. Louis Blues, the Montreal Canadiens, the Anaheim Ducks, the Vancouver Canucks, the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Rangers — sent seven or more players to the Sochi Olympics.
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Still, a little-noticed 2012 study may provide such evidence: It found that for every player an N.H.L. club sent to the Olympics, the club’s goal differential dropped by 0.088 of a goal per game compared with its performance before the Games. That is to say, clubs that sent many players to the Olympics in 1998, 2002, 2006 and 2010 suffered a bigger performance drop-off, on the whole, than clubs that sent few players.
The study, conducted by the University of Massachusetts professor Neil Longley and published in The International Journal of Sport Finance, is believed to be the only one to quantify the Olympic fatigue effect on N.H.L. clubs during the run to the playoffs.
“It could be physical fatigue; it could be emotional fatigue — we can’t really answer that question,” Longley said in a telephone interview. “There could be an energizing effect to being at the Olympics. But the numbers show that the more Olympians an N.H.L. team supplies, the greater its post-Olympic drop-off relative to its pre-Olympic performance.”
