How much longer will the NHL let players go to the World Championships?

A star player on a bad team injured his knee at the IIHF World Championships, and while it wasn't as bad as it could be, it was still very worrisome indeed.

I am, of course, talking about Eric Staal taking a knee to knee hit from Alex Edler at last year's Worlds, when this picture was plastered across every website and put a hell of a scare into the Carolina Hurricanes for obvious reasons.

This time around, the victim is obviously Alex Ovechkin, who took one hell of a collision and was carted out of the arena in an ambulance. Tests later showed that his knee injury was not as bad as originally feared, but the best player on the Washington Capitals is still going to be on the shelf for a while.

The good news is that Staal missed no actual NHL time as a result of his injury, nor, it seems, will Ovechkin. But one has to wonder just how much of a number the bum knee actually did on Staal, because this past season was the worst of his career by a decent enough margin as to be worrisome, in terms of production (his 61 points were the lowest total posted in a full season since he was a rookie in 2003-04, after going 53 in 48 in 2013). And while his possession numbers were actually improved, there's now talk that Carolina might try to trade him to free up some money and get some value while he still has it. Maybe these issues aren't related, and maybe they are. Who knows with that franchise?

But the larger point is pretty clear: In an era in which general managers (Garth Snow, for example) are openly complaining louder than ever about injuries picked up in international tournaments, and the NHL seems to be eternally locked in a will-they-won't-they struggle over whether it will even go to the next Olympics, one or two more injuries to star players is essentially going to mean that the league has to find a way to stop players going there every spring.

Evgeni Malkin, for example, just joined Team Russia for the remainder of the tournament, and can you imagine what happens if he hurts himself? Hellfire, brimstone, hard decisions.

The fact of the matter is that hockey at any level is dangerous, but the NHL even with all its injury and discipline problems is probably a lot safer than any other pro league in the world, or just about any international tournament. These players are the best in the world and while some of them generally don't play with honest intentions with regard to the safety of their opponents, they are generally able to keep up with each other and play in a way that isn't going to get somebody seriously hurt. This is, unfortunately, not true of players who play professionally overseas.

While Staal's injury was caused by a reckless play from Edler — an NHL player who most would probably agree doesn't play recklessly as a general rule — Ovechkin's was something that should have been avoidable. Marcus Kink is a winger in the German DEL who seems to be only okay even for that league whose “rambunctious style” is probably going to get him into a lot of trouble when he goes up against someone of Ovechkin's quality. If you watch the play on which Ovechkin was injured, it looks very much like Kink saw a truck coming down the highway and froze like a baby deer. He ducked at the last second and ended up hurting one of the best players in the world. There was pretty obviously no intent behind it, even if the IIHF did suspend to the injury.

But that's what happens. Kink has never seen a player with the skating power and ability of Ovechkin, and neither have half the guys in this tournament. It may not seem like that big of a jump, but these guys who play pro in Europe don't know what to do with actual high-quality NHLers.

If it keeps going like this, the chances are that there will one day be an injury bad enough to move the needle in the NHL to “Don't let these guys go.” The new collective bargaining agreement (articles 24.5 through 24.7 on page 155, specifically) relate to the ways in which NHLPA members will be permitted by the league and their teams to create or participate in international tournaments of any kind, and specifically states that players are allowed to go only if their clubs let them, the IIHF or their particular international federation covers insurance costs, and so on. Their contracts are further protected in the event of injury as though they were hurt in an NHL game (i.e. they cannot be voided, etc.).

That essentially means that only the league, and not individual teams, could decide that NHL players could theoretically not be released while still under contract to international teams, though those without a contract would be able to do so. The horses are out of the barn for this year, obviously. Teams can't un-injure or un-send their players, but this Ovechkin bang-up could, very reasonably, be something of a last straw.

That's might be especially true because of all this talk the last few years about a World Cup of Hockey that could presumably take place during the summer. While it's obvious that European players in particular get way up for this tournament, one wonders how enthusiastic they would be for the World Championships if they also had the option of playing in another tournament that would allow them to get paid a little (not that it would count toward hockey-related revenue, but the money would be split 50-50 between league and players' association) later in the summer. Playing as much as 110 games in a single season probably isn't high on their priority list; you have to have an offseason at some point, do you not?

It will be interesting to see how the league proceeds with this. Staal going down might not be the hugest deal because most people outside of the hockey community have never seen his face, let alone heard of him. Ovechkin is all over the Olympics, in TV ads, and so on. The NHL has a vested interest in keeping players like that healthy and ready to go, and they have the ability to provide a financial incentive to keep players on this side of the Atlantic. Based on nothing more than logic, you couldn't be surprised to see the NHL use it soon enough.