Preserving women's hockey as an Olympic sport and the contentious issues around international player transfers are among the topics that will be discussed at this summer's World Hockey Summit.
The agenda also includes issues such as player safety, skill development and potential harmonization of major international events such as the Olympics, world championship and the World Cup.
Personalities from all levels of the game will gather in Toronto for the Aug. 23-27 event.
Hockey Canada president and CEO Bob Nicholson, NHL deputy commissioner Bill Daly and Canadian Hockey League president David Branch were scheduled to attend a media briefing about the event in Toronto on Tuesday.
"The Molson World Hockey Summit was created to encourage further growth at all levels of the game, to broaden the exchange of ideas, to expand the dialogue on issues that impact the sport everywhere," Daly said in a video posted on the event's website. "As far as we've come in the past several years, we have a long way to go."
This summer's gathering has its roots in the suffering of Canada's notoriously neurotic hockey fans. That suffering reached a plateau in the final years of the last century, after the men's national team was held off the podium at the 1998 Winter Olympics.
The Open Ice summit was held in the summer of 1999, attended by some of the biggest names in the game -- including fabled NHL coach Scotty Bowman -- and hundreds of minor hockey coaches from across Canada. It produced a host of non-binding recommendations that focused on player development.
Similar goals have been set for this summer's event.
The IIHF, the NHL, Hockey Canada, USA Hockey and the CHL have all been listed as partners, with Molson as title sponsor. One group that seems to be missing from the roll call is the Russian-based KHL, which has been looming just beyond the NHL's borders, looking for players.
"To grow the game of hockey, we need to work together and share our knowledge," IIHF president Rene Fasel said on the summit's website. "We need the co-operation of all stakeholders."
The game's stake at the Olympics, at least on the women's side, was given a jolt at the Vancouver Olympics when IOC president Jacques Rogge addressed the monopoly of skill controlled by Canada and the U.S. against the rest of the field.
"There is a discrepancy there, everyone agrees with that," Rogge told reporters. "I would personally give them more time to grow but there must be a period of improvement. We cannot continue without improvement."
