If you were hoping to see your favorite Colorado Avalanche players take their ice to represent their countries at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea, you are going to be sadly disappointed.

The writing has been on the wall for some time, but on Monday, the NHL confirmed that they will not be participating in the games.

The NHL has participated in every Olympics since 1998. The Avalanche had four participants in the 2014 games in Sochi:  Matt Duchene (Canada), Gabriel Landeskog (Sweden), Paul Stastny (United States) and Semyon Varlamov (Russia).

The Avalanche also have several other connections to the Olympics. Milan Hejduk won a gold  medal with the Czech Republic in 1998. Joe Sakic won gold and was named tournament MVP with Canada in 2002. Peter Forsberg won gold in 1994 and 2006 (scoring the clinching shootout goal in the former). Finally, Duchene won gold in 2014.

With the NHL not going to South Korea, it is now also unlikely that they will go to Beijing in 2022 either.