Another NHL Marketing Fail: No Canada-NA Game

[Lempo]

This is one of my biggest pet peeves with these types of tournaments. You get these great teams together and you don't even have them play every other great team. It's such a waste to go through all the effort to put on a tournament like this and skip possibly great match ups.

That actually sucks. The standard Group -> Elimination game system guarantees that you won't play against one or some of the other Group's Big5 country.

 

[DickSmehlik]

Way to go NHL. You finally have ESPN interested in hockey again and your largest market will be tuning in to college football on Saturday.

 

[TedLundy]

Uhhh I thought that lunqvist had one of his best games tbh. Every team had a back to back.

Yeah, but Team NA had a day of rest while Sweden played Finland. So Sweden had a back to back against a team who had a day of rest and training, and i think Sweden was the only team to do so aswell.

 

[Flamingo]

A pre-NHL-season tournament had to be short & sweet, otherwise teams and/or NHLPA wouldn't have agreed to it.

Pre-tournament complaint: gimmicky! Anthems for Na and eu teams? Nobody cares! U23 players don't want to play against their home team! EU players won't be motivated! I won't watch!

Post-tournament complaint: I wanted more! Why didn't that not-gimmicky NA team get to play everybody? EU got into finals and not USA??? Bad format!!

 

[JackSlater]

The day this tournament was announced, Bill Daly said that Hockey Canada and USA Hockey didn't want the Young Gunz playing against their own national teams. It was implied that that was the reason for the Young Gunz being in the other pool, and it seems likely that it is the same reason there was no exhibition game. I also suspect that the NHL rightly didn't like the prospect of the general public (not HFboard members) seeing players playing against their own country in a supposedly international competition, but that is more speculative.

 

[Lempo]

Uhhh I thought that lunqvist had one of his best games tbh. Every team had a back to back.

Finland and USA didn't... and both apparently developed taste for not playing excessively.

 

[Northern Dancer]

Would some just prefer the NHL get rid of the sport and just script everything so it plays out in a way that makes them happy i.e. like wrestling?

This made me laugh. Its both funny and true at the same time.