Hockey Fans Loved NHL’s Creative Post to Evade Copyrights in Milan Cortina Olympics

The 2026 Milan Cortina Olympics are well underway, with the men’s hockey competition expected to be one of the most entertaining events in Northern Italy this winter. That is, if you can find clips of the action on social media.

The Olympics has extremely strict rules that ban media outlets (including official ones like the NHL) from posting videos of the Games in order to protect broadcast rights. This means that any unauthorized videos shared by users online will be taken down, making it difficult for people to see clips or highlights of live events that aren’t directly posted by the Olympics’ social media account.

Enter the NHL’s social media team. As Team Canada faced off against Team Czechia in the men’s hockey opening game on Thursday, the NHL account shared an incredibly sophisticated rendering of a highlight of Canada center Macklin Celebrini scoring his country’s first goal in the NHL’s highly anticipated return to the Games.

Take a look at that extremely impressive and artistic video below:

Put in the Louvre. And big props to nba paint for the all-time great collaboration.

The New York Islanders’ social media team also got in on the fun, sharing their unique homemade highlight of Islanders star and Canadian center Bo Horvat’s goal during Team Canada’s 5-0 rout of Czechia.

As you can imagine, the Olympic’s ridiculously strict copyright rules had hockey fans feeling a lot of FOMO and getting pretty angry at the organizers for not taking advantage of the opportunity to grow the game on the sport’s biggest stage.

Fans did, however, tip their hats to the media outlets who were trying their best during these tough times:

More Winter Olympics on Sports Illustrated