Dave Feschuk: Ex-Leaf Eric Fehr hopes NHL stars get to play in the Olympics. If not, he’s willing to serve

As the NHL postponements pile up and COVID’s latest wave proliferates, hockey-loving Canadians are watching a long-dreaded possibility emerge as a seemingly inevitable reality: The dream of NHL players competing at February’s Beijing Olympics, if it’s not yet dead, is quickly fading. Heck, at this rate the Olympics themselves can’t be considered a sure thing.

While NHL commissioner Gary Bettman has said he’ll leave it to the players to decide if they travel to Beijing, the league has reserved the right to nix Olympic participation if the NHL schedule is materially impacted by COVID-related havoc. A quick look at this weekend’s pockmarked schedule alone — which saw the Maple Leafs’ Saturday-Sunday back-to-back in Vancouver and Seattle pushed to future dates, and five of Saturday’s 10 games postponed — suggested that if something doesn’t change soon, the league will be able to make an easy case that it needs the three-week Olympic break to make up for lost time.

For Eric Fehr, the former Leafs centreman, that can only mean one thing: Now more than ever, it’s important he stay ready.

“An opportunity to win an Olympic medal is not something I ever thought I’d have,” said Fehr, 36.

Indeed, just because Canada doesn’t send NHLers to Beijing doesn’t mean it won’t send a national team.

Should NHLers not attend the Games, Hockey Canada has said it will select an Olympic squad from among the professionals competing at both the Channel One Cup, where Canada just finished with a 1-2 record, and next week’s Spengler Cup in Switzerland. Which means that instead of a roster featuring Connor McDavid and Sidney Crosby and coached by Jon Cooper of the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Tampa Bay Lightning, Canada could be looking at a team dotted with little-known European pros and one-time NHLers coached by Claude Julien.

The last time that happened, when the NHL skipped the Pyeongchang Olympics in 2018, the Euro pro-heavy Team Canada coached by Willie Desjardins suffered a disappointing loss to Germany in the semifinals en route to a bronze medal.

Fehr, the 14-year NHL veteran on the roster for both the Channel One and Spengler Cups, said he considers competing for Canada to be the highest honour of his sporting career. But speaking over the phone from Moscow on Saturday, he was adamant that as a hockey-loving Canadian he would much rather watch the NHL’s top players at the Olympics than hop on a plane to Beijing, if he’s among those asked to replace them.

“As a hockey fan, which I am, I want the NHL to go. I want to watch the best in the world compete,” Fehr said. “I think that’s what every Canadian wants to see. I want to watch McDavid and Crosby play together and see how Team Canada does. That’s going to be super-entertaining, if that can happen.

And if it can’t happen, Fehr said that he, like the rest of the players on Hockey Canada’s reserve list, would relish the opportunity to compete for Olympic gold.

“If (the NHL going to Beijing) doesn’t work out, I would love to be the Plan B,” said Fehr. “I never thought I’d really have a chance to play at an Olympics. But now it seems a little bit more real than it did yesterday.”

If the opportunity seems a bit more real, so do the risks. Whether or not the NHL pulls out of the Games, NHL players have been expressing consternation with the potential pitfalls of competing in Beijing, including the notion that a positive COVID test once there could lead to a stay in quarantine that could last several weeks. While Fehr shares some of those concerns — he’s the married father of three children and wouldn’t want to be away from his family any longer than necessary — he said they wouldn’t keep him from answering Hockey Canada’s call, should it come. Which seems to be a popular sentiment among members of Canada’s team at the Channel One Cup.

“To be an Olympian for Canada, I don’t think there are many things I wouldn’t do for that opportunity,” Corban Knight, a former NHLer, told reporters in Moscow. “Yeah, there’s obviously risks and maybe a little bit negative side of it. But yeah, I think you look at it and the positives outweigh the negatives by a landslide. So if that opportunity comes, I don’t think I’m going to worry too much about what could happen. Just the opportunity to wear the maple leaf on the Olympic stage would be an absolutely life-changing moment.”

Fehr has checked off a lot of impressive boxes as a pro, including hoisting a Stanley Cup as a member of the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016. He was acquired by the Leafs at the trade deadline in 2017, but played just one game — in which he blocked a shot that resulted in a broken finger that kept him out for the rest of the season, and Toronto’s first-round playoff series against the team that drafted him 18th overall in 2003, the Washington Capitals. After spending the past two seasons in the Swiss league, Fehr said he was settling into post-hockey life in Winnipeg when he got a call from Hockey Canada about playing in a pair of December tournaments — this with an understanding that if the NHL Olympic plan went sideways, he’d have a chance to be a part of his country’s contingency.

“Since I’ve got this invite to the reserve list I’ve just been trying to picture myself playing at the Olympics, and that motivates me training and staying ready to play,” Fehr said.

“Like I said, I’m hoping the NHL gets to go and I get to watch them. But if they don’t, I’ll be putting my best foot forward to give myself a chance to be on that team. Because an opportunity to win an Olympic medal is not something I ever thought I’d get.”