Yes. The Nagano Games will be the first Olympics to allow National Hockey League professionals to play for their national teams, and the NHL will cancel its league play for the duration of the Games to let them do so.

Ice hockey is one of the most popular sports in the United States, right up there with baseball, basketball, and American football. The NHL is home to about 600 players on 26 teams in the United States and Canada. There are plenty of players from hockey-loving nations like Russia, Finland, and Norway, and the fast action makes the sport live up to its billing as the "Coolest Game on Earth."

The Summer Games saw America field a "Dream Team" of professional basketball players; the Winter Games will feature hockey Dream Teams from around the world. In all, 14 countries will send teams to the men's hockey competition: Canada, the Czech Republic, Finland, Russia, Sweden, and the United States, who will be able to skip the preliminary round because of their strong performances in the World Championships; and Austria, Belarus, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, and Slovakia.