Very interesting. I've heard a few rumblings about the possibility of moving ice hockey to the Summer Olympics to accommodate the NHL schedule, but that seems ludicrous to me. For one thing, there's the obvious problem that playing a hockey tournament in July or August seems awfully silly. Secondly, they'd seem out of place in the summer games. And most important of all, why would the IOC even want to see another sport like this in the Summer Olympics when they don't really need it to enhance the exposure of the Olympics?
I'm not a big fan of having NHL players in the Olympics, but the NHL has one very good reason to send its players there: television viewers. This won't be an issue in a place like South Korea in 2018 where the time is 9-12 hours off from North America, but if the Olympics are held in North America and the NHL doesn't shut down for two weeks, the league could potentially end up losing a lot of TV viewers who would rather watch Olympic hockey than NHL hockey.