Nico Hischier grew up in Switzerland dreaming of playing in the Winter Olympics.

“I’ve never gotten to experience that,” he said.

The countdown is underway for Hischier, who hopes to join the NHL’s best at the Olympics in Milan in February 2026. This season serves as a leadup to that long-awaited return since the NHL hasn’t allowed its players at the Olympics since 2014.

Hischier and the New Jersey Devils open the season in Prague against the Buffalo Sabres, two more games will take place in Finland this fall and the 4 Nations Face-off is a four-team February appetizer to the main event as the league and players embrace hockey’s international roots.

“Our players — putting aside the Olympics — have a history and a tradition of representing their countries, whether it’s the world juniors or the world championships,” Commissioner Gary Bettman told The Associated Press last month. “We are the most international of the four major North American sports. There’s no question about that, and there’s no question about how our players feel about representing their countries.”

The IIHF men’s world championship takes place during the Stanley Cup playoffs, and the past two Winter Olympics have gone on without NHL players.

The last time the sport’s cream of the crop all got to play in the same tournament was the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, and even that carried an asterisk because of the format that shifted U.S. and Canada’s stars aged 23 and younger to Team North America and amalgamated those from Slovakia, Switzerland, Germany and elsewhere to form Team Europe.