NHL players will not represent their respective homelands in the men’s hockey tournament at the Beijing Olympics, their participation in the Winter Games becoming the latest casualty of a COVID-19 resurgence that has ravaged rosters and scrambled schedules of sports teams and leagues around the world.

The NHL, NHL Players’ Association and International Ice Hockey Federation had agreed in September that NHL players would return to the Olympics after the parties couldn’t agree on terms for them to compete in the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang, Korea.

However, in that agreement the league and the union reserved the right to keep players home from China “in the event evolving COVID-19 conditions are deemed by the NHL/NHLPA to render participation by NHL Players to be impractical or unsafe.”

The NHL and players had until Jan. 10 to withdraw without incurring heavy financial penalties.