NHL uses creative method to bypass Olympic copyright

Hockey fans during the 2026 Olympics are in for a treat as they are able to watch the best of the best (most of at least) duke it out for the chance to be called gold medalists and cement themselves as the top international squad.

But there's also a time zone difference due to the games being played in Italy, and some games are being played very early in the morning, and for those early birds that's perfect.

For other fans though, who don't necessarily have the luxury of being able to watch those games or need to find highlights, they are left in the dark a bit as the IOC has prohibited clips from being shown.

It's hard to find a lot of footage, and though there are bits and pieces thanks to some savvy tech wizards online, a lot of it is blocked.

But that didn't stop the NHL from implementing arguably one of the neatest (and cutest) ways to give fans a taste of the action they may have missed:

The NHL team decided to use MS Paint to give fans a 'video' of what went down with Macklin Celebrini tipping a shot from defenceman Cale Makar.

In crude fashion, we get to see Makar (and his devilish eyebrows) see the perfect opportunity to throw a puck on net, and we see the puck essentially magnetize to the stick of Celebrini, who tips it in and finished off with Makar and Celebrini doing the Superman pose as if they were in Pairs Figure Skating.

While we haven't seen more of the NHL animations, even if they do have the one it shows that they care about the fans seeing the action and whoever gave the go-ahead to post that deserves a lot of credit for giving the team the creativity to have fun with things.

We need to wait and see if there are any highlights from the Canada/Switzerland game courtesy of the NHL Animation Studios (trademark pending), it's at least a unique way to give fans a taste of what they missed due to some unfortunate restrictions.

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