Better concept for the World Cup

[Nordic*]

Agreed. As a Finn I'd have absolutely no allegiance towards a team consisting of random Euro players and 2-3 Finns. Why in the hell should I care about a team like that? That idea's not interesting in the least, it's garbage, just like this version of the World Cup.

Don't worry. No Finn would make the Euro team anyway.

 

[Jopo]

Don't worry. No Finn would make the Euro team anyway.

No worries. No Finn would make it, anyway. As an Individual.

Just like usually. In Team Sport.

 

[Conspiracy Theorist]

No worries. No Finn would make it, anyway. As an Individual.

Just like usually. In Team Sport.

All teams would be packed with Finnish goalies if given the chance. Ironically, goalies might be Finland's weakness in the future.

 

[Canuck21t]

Just make it a 7 game series between Europe and North America?

That would peak my interest way more than this joke tourny.

No. Most people want to see their NATIONAL team. Not team Scandinavia, not team North America, not team Eastern Block, not team Beard, not team over-50. With any gimmick team, it is likely the players won't give their all. You have no such doubt when the players play for the national team. Anything but a national team is a gimmick. Why can't we just go back to the old way of the Canada Cup or the last two World Cup instead of re-inventing the wheel?

 

[Zegras Zebra]

Its the World Cup of Hockey, so why not make it the "World Cup" of hockey? By this I mean why don't they take the best 32 countries (with a qualification system) and make the format similar to soccer's FIFA World Cup? Bettman talks all the time about "growing the game" and an international tournament which contains this many countries would surely grow the game. In the end we will still end up with a best on best tournament, only with more countries than usual competing. If you have 8 groups of 4 teams with the best 16 going to a single elimination knockout (until the 3 game final), then the champion still only plays 9 games maximum. I don't think its worse than the current format, the NHL probably would make more money, and the fans will be happier.

Groups would approximately look like the following based on current IIHF World Rankings:

Group A
Canada
Kazakhstan
Austria
Belgium

Group B
Russia
Slovenia
Italy
Serbia

Group C
Finland
France
Hungary
Spain

Group D
USA
Denmark
Poland
Romania

Group E
Sweden
Latvia
Japan
Estonia

Group F
Czech Republic
Norway
Ukraine
The Netherlands

Group G
Switzerland
Germany
South Korea
Croatia

Group H
Slovakia
Belarus
Great Britain
Lithuania

 

[Jopo]

Yeah! True International Hockey. A tournament would look like that, about!

Then it's up to NTs what kind roster they can gather for it, but accusing bad roster for bad bad result wouldn't help as everybody can do same arrangements for it.

True measure, that NHL cannot provide. Surely better for long term development of the Game of Hockey, all around the world.

No gimmick. 27-2 results are just real thing, but how long they would remain 27-2?

Best-on-best integrated and in-built from the start. Winner is best. Simple.

 

[Urbanskog]

Although I am one for including more countries, 32 teams is simply too many. Imagine how badly would Belgium be beaten by a top country.

 

[Zegras Zebra]

Although I am one for including more countries, 32 teams is simply too many. Imagine how badly would Belgium be beaten by a top country.

My guess would be that Canada would beat Belgium 12-0 while Canada focuses on experimenting with the team. If Russia decided to run up the score on purpose 16-1 isn't unreasonable. The Corsi numbers would be insane!

I know that a 32 country World Cup of Hockey is a radical idea, and that the countries ranked 20th - 32nd or so would get blown away by the top 6 nations at this time, but it may be one of the only ways to get Belgium, Spain, The Netherlands, and Great Britain to care more about hockey, and develop more resources to help build the game in those regions. Most hockey fans in those regions don't care when they play each other, but if they were playing a top country like Canada or Sweden there may be more attention on the game. Look at how excited Hungarian fans were at the World Cup even though they lost badly to the larger nations. I think it would be a good idea to get some more exposure for their players to play against the world's best so maybe in a generation or two they will be more competitive in those games. Maybe 32 countries is too many at this time, but eventually international hockey will be more competitive as a whole.

 

[Jopo]

The Problem with rigid Elitism in drive for Best-on-best tournaments is just that it forget that few current top NTs were once just like those belgiums and hungarys, later evolving to something totally different. For example:

Team Finland's Biggest defeat
Canada 24–0 Finland
(Oslo, Norway; 3 March 1958)

It's highly unlike that this kind carnage would be possible now between these NTs, even then Team Finland would assemble lines from young un-heard FEL and Mestis players against the Canadian Best of the Best Team A. Things change. When they evidently changed in case of Finland, it's possible that things can change for other countries and their NTs too.

Maybe 17-0 shock therapy sessions of 60 minutes are best way to teach hockey reality, act as a spark for further adjustments, development, and progression.

 

[Zegras Zebra]

The Problem with rigid Elitism in drive for Best-on-best tournaments is just that it forget that few current top NTs were once just like those belgiums and hungarys, later evolving to something totally different. For example:

Team Finland's Biggest defeat
Canada 24–0 Finland
(Oslo, Norway; 3 March 1958)

It's highly unlike that this kind carnage would be possible now between these NTs, even then Team Finland would assemble lines from young un-heard FEL and Mestis players against the Canadian Best of the Best Team A. Things change. When they evidently changed in case of Finland, it's possible that things can change for other countries and their NTs too.

Maybe 17-0 shock therapy sessions of 60 minutes are best way to teach hockey reality, act as a spark for further adjustments, development, and progression.

Exactly, maybe if countries ranked 24th and lower want to improve their competitiveness with the power 6 nations in the future, they need to lose badly to them now. Maybe in 20 years Lithuania or Croatia will beat Russia or Sweden and it won't be a massive upset.

 

[PNWKingsFan]

Exactly, maybe if countries ranked 24th and lower want to improve their competitiveness with the power 6 nations in the future, they need to lose badly to them now. Maybe in 20 years Lithuania or Croatia will beat Russia or Sweden and it won't be a massive upset.

I understand the thinking behind this and agree somewhat, but I'm not sure that going straight to 32 teams is the best way to go. Even the FIFA World Cup took until 1998 to expand into 32 teams. Teams like Spain would get absolutely killed at a tourney like that.

Better route would be to use qualification as a chance to give lower-ranked teams the ability to compete and practice against teams that are still better than them, but not so overwhelmingly so that they wouldn't muster much experience or skill from the experience.

That being said I think 16 is a good number for a reasonably "open" tournament. 8 would be the absolute minimum for a top-level tournament IMO.

 

[xxxx]

Its the World Cup of Hockey, so why not make it the "World Cup" of hockey? By this I mean why don't they take the best 32 countries (with a qualification system) and make the format similar to soccer's FIFA World Cup? Bettman talks all the time about "growing the game" and an international tournament which contains this many countries would surely grow the game. In the end we will still end up with a best on best tournament, only with more countries than usual competing. If you have 8 groups of 4 teams with the best 16 going to a single elimination knockout (until the 3 game final), then the champion still only plays 9 games maximum. I don't think its worse than the current format, the NHL probably would make more money, and the fans will be happier.

Groups would approximately look like the following based on current IIHF World Rankings:

Group A
Canada
Kazakhstan
Austria
Belgium

Group B
Russia
Slovenia
Italy
Serbia

Group C
Finland
France
Hungary
Spain

Group D
USA
Denmark
Poland
Romania

Group E
Sweden
Latvia
Japan
Estonia

Group F
Czech Republic
Norway
Ukraine
The Netherlands

Group G
Switzerland
Germany
South Korea
Croatia

Group H
Slovakia
Belarus
Great Britain
Lithuania

Why not, but in FIFA World Cup Spain is able to lose to Chile 0-2, and New Zeland is able to make a tie with Italy 1-1. In hockey, Slovakia would beat Lithuania 20-0. In soccer, you have a 32-team format because there is plenty of good teams, and some are still not even making the tournament (like Sweden for example). Soccer is totally different in this. In hockey, something between 8 and 16 teams seems to be really the best if you want to have fifa-like world cup. 32 in hockey is like 100 in soccer.

 

[xxxx]

Exactly, maybe if countries ranked 24th and lower want to improve their competitiveness with the power 6 nations in the future, they need to lose badly to them now. Maybe in 20 years Lithuania or Croatia will beat Russia or Sweden and it won't be a massive upset.

But FIFA World Cup is a stage for the best in the world, not a tournament for developing other countries' national teams. They have qualification system in each zone (UEFA, CONCACAF, OFC, etc.), where the lower teams have a chance to play the higher teams in the very qualification. The World Cup is actually the final stage with the best of the best. The World Cup of hockey with 8 or 12 teams would be exactly the same.

 

[Zegras Zebra]

I see your points about how maybe 32 countries is too big, and the smaller nations would be destroyed by the power 6 nations compared with the FIFA World Cup where even the countries who barely qualified won't likely be embarrassed by the top soccer nations. What I see is if the World Cup of Hockey was always an 8 team tournament (without the gimmicky Team Europe and U23 NA) is that it will always be the power 6, Slovakia and Switzerland as the power 6 is evolving more into a power 8. If it were a 12 team tournament just add some combination of Belarus, Norway, Germany, Denmark, Latvia and Slovenia to the event. If it were a 16 team tournament there would realistically only be 20 or so countries with a realistic chance to qualify regularly. Essentially my point is the lower ranked countries would never be motivated enough to improve their programs because they feel they have no real chance to ever qualify. If it were a 24-32 team tournament, they would be much more likely to qualify and put money into the sport. My other reasoning to want more countries to qualify is a large event like this may make hockey more relevant in non-traditional nations. If you can get the attention of non-hockey fans in smaller hockey nations by having their national teams play meaningful games against top competition then hopefully it will create new fans of the game whose kids may grow up playing the sport and improving those countries talent level to better compete against the traditional hockey powers. Hungarians wouldn't care if they won a game against Japan or Serbia, but when they played against Canada or Finland, the casual fans were excited to be playing meaningful games against some of the best players in the world regardless of the result. People generally need motivation to gain an interest in a sport and a local team playing world class opposition is a good way to build interest.

A soccer example would be about how Canadians really don't care about their own national team, as most Canadians cheer for other nations such as where their families originally came from or traditional powers such as Brazil. World Cup qualifying traditionally isn't important as games against Honduras and Costa Rica don't interest the casual soccer fan. But if Canada played meaningful games against England, Spain or Argentina then non-soccer fans would take notice of their own national team no matter how badly they end up losing to these powerhouses.

With modern defensive systems I don't think scores would get too out of hand in the men's game where smaller nations lose 20-0 like in past World Junior tournaments and some World Women's tournaments. Maybe the occasional game would get to double digits, but most games would be closer than you would expect.

 

[ForumNamePending]

Just make it a 7 game series between Europe and North America?

That would peak my interest way more than this joke tourny.

The NHL is in fact planning some sort of "Ryder Cup" event between North America vs Europe and it'll be just as ridiculous as team U-24 and team Europe.

Ya, the NA vs Europe thing was actually the format for the All-Star game around the turn of the millennium. It ended up looking like every other All-Star game and was abandoned after a few years. The fact that apparently some people within the NHL and PA view this idea as a key piece to the league's "international strategy" moving forward is, well...

I have a bit of an out there concept that I think would make the tourney a lot more competitive and interesting.

Start by scrapping the Czech Republic team as they're the weakest team other than team Europe in my opinion. With them gone that allows the Czechs to be picked to the team Europe which would make them stronger. Now here is where it gets a little funky.

Replace that Czech team with a North American snubs team which could definitely compete at a high level.

On top of that allow team Europe to select snubbed players from all the European teams in the tournament.

If these changes were made I believe not only would it be more competitive but more entertaining for fans. It replaces the weaker Czech team with what would be a strong and motivated snub team which would raise the level of play.

Also the Snub North Americans and the snub Euro's playing on team Europe would be motivated to prove the doubters wrong and raise their level of play.

So you really don't have any interested in an actual international tournament, which is fine of course, but why have such a convoluted process to divvy up the players? If on-paper parity and squeezing in as many NHL stars as possible is your main priority, why not just pick 8 GMs, 8 coaches, and perhaps 8 captains, and have them fill the rosters buy conducting a 20-25 round "snake" draft?

Although I am one for including more countries, 32 teams is simply too many. Imagine how badly would Belgium be beaten by a top country.

Ya, I don't think a WCup should be limiting itself to being a 6-8 nation invitational, but hockey doesn't need the final phase of the tournament to include 32 teams either.

Anyway, here are two formats that I sorta, kinda, like...

Well first a few things regardless of format used.

-A "real" World Cup/Championship should be (a) open to any country that officially plays the sport and wishes to participate and (b) any participating country should have access to select any player who is eligible to play for them... Seems simple enough, but in hockey it would appear to be a Unicorn.
-Whoever runs the tournament should be willing and able to organize it at regular intervals.

Format 1:
-12 teams divided into 2 groups
-Top 4 in each group make the QF and also automatically qualify for the next tournament.
-Bottom 2 teams in each group are out and have to re-qualify for the next tournament.
-Tournament fits nicely into a 3 weekend, 2 week, 16-17 day window window
-Group play starts on a Friday and runs until the Sunday of the following weekend - So Group A plays Fri, Sun, Tue, etc. and Group B plays Sat, Mon, Wed, etc.
-QFs would be A1-B4, A2-B3, etc. and played on Tue and/or Wed, SFs played on Thu and/or Fri and final (and if you want a 3rd place game) played on Sat and/or Sun.

If people think 12 teams is too many (I personally don't), then without much tweaking the format also works with 10 teams. Perhaps to make the group stage more meaningful you eliminate 2 QFs and give the group winners a bye to the SFs.

Format 2:
-16 teams divided into 4 groups.
-Top 2 in each group advance to the 2nd phase and automatically qualify for the next tournament.
-Bottom 2 in each group are out and last place team needs to re-qualify for next tournament.
-2nd phase is the 8 remaining teams divided into 2 groups. Something like A1, B1, C2, D2 and C1, D1, A2, B2.
-Top 2 in each group advance to the SFs.
-Tournament fits into a 3 weekend, 2.5 week, 17-18 day window window...
-First phase could run Thu-Tue of the first week - So groups A and B play Thu, Sat, Mon and group C and D the other days.
-2nd phase would then run Thu-Tue of the second week - So group A Thu, Sat, Mon and group B the other days.
-SFs would be A1-B2, B1-A2 and played on the Thu and/or Fri and final (and if you want a 3rd place game) played on Sat and/or Sun.

So people who want a more inclusive final tournament get 16 teams and people who want a tournament with only the top teams can just wait until the 2nd week before tuning in.

The problem with this format is you wouldn't know who is playing where and when for much of the tournament... Not sure if that is fair to fans who are looking to attend.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure none of this will ever happen and the next WCup won't be until 2023 (after the next lockout is resolved) when we will all tune in to see if Crosby can lead the NA O33 team to glory.

 

[JETZZZ]

The new and improved 2016 World Cup of NHL by Mountain Dew.

No national teams anymore, instead teams will represent their sponsors (team Pepsi, team Nike, team Rodgers...)

8 coaches/or celebrities will each pick a 23 man roster from players currently under contract in the NHL. That way, all roster spots on all teams will be filled with NHLers (and John Scott) and therefore will be "best on best" hockey.

Each roster must fit under the current salary cap.

Tournament will be played in the middle of July in Toronto.

Tickets will be +$1,000 US each, and each game will have a half time show featuring Canadian music acts that have made it big in the States (Justin Beiber, Celine Dion, Michael Buble, Nickelback...) Also, all attending will be required to wear an official NHL World Cup of Hockey jersey from a team of their choosing or they will be removed from the arena.

Much like at the all star games, checking and most physicality will be frowned upon. Players are not allowed to exert themselves too hard, this way, unapproved injuries will be minimized and the the 30 NHL team owners wont lose their bought and payed for star player for the season.

George Stroublimbolbibus or whatever his name is, will do the play by play for all games with Pierre McGuire.

The boards, ice, and uniforms will all be plastered with as many adds as possible and the glow puck will return for this tournament.

 

[xxxx]

There is going to be another World Cup in 2020, and I believe it will be with a qualification for the other countries. I think that's kinda perfect and the best you can really get in reality.

 

[Canuckistani]

There is going to be another World Cup in 2020, and I believe it will be with a qualification for the other countries. I think that's kinda perfect and the best you can really get in reality.

You think the NHL is going to pay for a qualifying tournament so that more non-NHLers can compete next time?

 

[xxxx]

You think the NHL is going to pay for a qualifying tournament so that more non-NHLers can compete next time?

Yes.

 

[Canuckistani]

Yes.

And why would they do that if they've already shown a pathological obsession with maximizing the number of NHL players for the sake of higher profits?

 

[JackSlater]

And why would they do that if they've already shown a pathological obsession with maximizing the number of NHL players for the sake of higher profits?

Very interested to hear why anyone would possibly believe that, given that the NHL's main issue with international hockey is money and that there is no demand at all for this qualifying tournament.

 

[Canuckistani]

Very interested to hear why anyone would possibly believe that, given that the NHL's main issue with international hockey is money and that there is no demand at all for this qualifying tournament.

Yeah, the same Gary Bettman who wants Team Kopitar and Team U-24 will suddenly do a complete 180 and pay for a qualifying tournament in Europe so that Germany, Belarus, Slovakia and Switzerland can bring tons of non-NHLers to the next NHL Cash Grab Cup.

Who in their right mind would believe this?

If anything we can expect the NHL to replace the Czechs with another gimmick team if there are enough "fans" willing to pay to see the two they already have.

 

[JackSlater]

Yeah, the same Gary Bettman who wants Team Kopitar and Team U-24 will suddenly do a complete 180 and pay for a qualifying tournament in Europe so that Germany, Belarus, Slovakia and Switzerland can bring tons of non-NHLers to the next NHL Cash Grab Cup.

Who in their right mind would believe this?

If anything we can expect the NHL to replace the Czechs with another gimmick team if there are enough "fans" willing to pay to see the two they already have.

Honestly, it does seem more likely that the NHL looks at the best players not going and makes a North American Leftovers or Canada 2 team. We actually have confirmation that the NHL and Hockey Canada did actually discuss a second team Canada for this tournament before deciding on the Young Gunz instead.

 

[xxxx]

Honestly, it does seem more likely that the looks at the best players not going and makes a North American Leftovers or Canada 2 team. We actually have confirmation that the and Canada did actually discuss a second team Canada for this tournament before deciding on the Young Gunz instead.

and we have confirmation that the NHL thinks about having a qualification tournament for european countries in 2019.

the schedule should be like this: 2016 - WC, 2018 - Ryder Cup of Hockey in London, 2019 - qualification for WC, 2020 - WC

And btw, I would love to see Canada's B team sometime in the future.

 

[Conspiracy Theorist]

and we have confirmation that the NHL thinks about having a qualification tournament for european countries in 2019.

And btw, I would love to see Canada's B team sometime in the future.

I don't think Canada's B team is necessarily worse than their A team. I mean, Canada's team in WHC 2015 was better than the team in Sochi 2014 in some ways.