I much rather have that and a clean sport and with a vivid international hockey. Plus KHL or someone else would just take its place, it is not like the players would disapear, and even if they would I would still prefer it.
Olympics: Bettman hints NHL won't play in 2018 and 2022
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I much rather have that and a clean sport and with a vivid international hockey. Plus KHL or someone else would just take its place, it is not like the players would disapear, and even if they would I would still prefer it.
Well, you obviously responded to very emotional and aggressive post in the same way. In fact NHL attitude to int. hockey is very damaging in my opinion... So far we already established 4years olympic circles with 4 WC within. It gave a room to national teams to prepared themselfs with some conception and long time goals. In my point of view it was the best compromise what you can really achieve on int. stage. An what is more important - it had system. Now it looks like that one decision will damage everything and brings us back to 70s with some irregular series.....
As much as I like NHL as a best hockey league, I have to say on the other hand that there are a lot of "unhealthy" tendences in this organization. One of them is definitely NHL's desire to be more importatnt than int. hockey. Even if it logically does not make any sense they still trying to come up with their own alternative. however they just cause more damages than anything else....
Lets be honest, all of the reasons for not sending NHLers to OG are just excuses. Considering in what conditions do other clubs work, how many times are other leagues interrupted because of int. event., and what risks do clubs in this leagues have to undergo (budget issues, risk of relegation etc.), NHL reasons are super laughable... Than you can barely be surprised that quite a lot of people call them greedy selfish misers. I am not saying that this is also exactly my opinion, however I understand to this attitude.....
Btw. I do not even agree wtih your parallel to badminton. Remember cold war? NHL was somewhere very far in the shadow for most of the players outside NA, either because of regime restrictions or lack of skill in Swe and Finland which had not been on top yet. Did it have any impact on hockey popularity? Not really......
Why can't the World Cup become a regular thing? In the 80's The Canada Cup was every 3rd year. They skipped a year and had another in 91. It ended and was resurrected as the World Cup. If the IOC, IIHF, NHL couldn't agree on Olympics, then it would have continued as a regular event. Now, they have it in 2016, and go every four years. Have it right after the Summer Olympics when people are filled with a sense of patriotism for their athletes.
kudymen
Hakstok was a fascist clique hiver lickballs.gif
Why not combine both teams into one, the United States of Finland.
What do you think Urbanskog?
And Conan O'Brien would finally have no internal struggles who to cheer for, as a Golden God of Finland
The problem with the NHL is that it's a business that simply cannot see the greater good beyond its own profits. That's understandable on some level - it's a business after all - but in international sport one is not only dealing with money.
For the fans and players emotions and national pride are what define the international game, and big business had better understand that if they want to be relevant in the scene.
Instead the NHL thinks it can, or should, be able to define the international game all by itself. Hense the idiotic notion that fans would actually want to see some no-nation "all-star" teams at the World Cup, just so that the NHL can showcase all of its best players, or that Olympic participation should depend on times zones being conducive to NA viewership numbers.
The FIFA World Cup is so successful because while money is still made, all leagues around the world put the competition first, knowing that's what fans and players want. By not setting its own priorities accordingly, the NHL risks doing horrible damage to the international game.
110% agree with everything. There must be a peak where you shold stop and think that it is still about a hockey and it's all basic elements..I hope that these int. negotiations are not just about diplomacy and "big balls" and there is still this basic level of understanding somewhere....
Frank the Tank
The Godfather
One has to look at the history of why the NHL and IIHF relationship remains adversarial. The IIHF (at the behest of the IOC, who wanted to strictly adhere to the amateur athlete status) was quite antagonistic for decades to Hockey Canada (and USA) at international events because these nations had their best players playing in the NHL. Over the ensuing years, the NHL idependently grew their brand of hockey to a very high level, attracted the best players from all over the world, and now reap the financial rewards of this successful growth. As a result, hockey as a sport has a unique business situation where the professional league that was shunned and looked down upon has become more powerful than the international federation managing the sport. So now that the NHL is successful and popular, the IIHF wants the their continued cooperation so the IIHF can make more money. Is it wrong for the NHL to say, what is in it for us? It is apparent the NHL has grown tired of negotiating with the IIHF/IOC, who refuses to budge on issue like sharing of media content, scheduling concerns, and selection of poor Winter Olympic hosts.
First off, the mixed teams were never taken seriously and shot down pretty quick. They are not damaging the international game. They still want to hold a best-on-best tourney. Why does it matter if it is the Olympics or World Cup? Why does it matter if it is the IIHF running the show or the NHL/NHLPA?
Great post.
BUT BUT BUT, the IIHF is the whole world. If all of us rinky dink Euro leagues can bow down to the IIHF, why can't the NHL? And, the IIHF was right and the NHL was wrong for all those years. Guys like Fetisov, Mikhailov, Petrov, Tretiak, Makarov WERE amateurs. Duh, they were in the Army. They were soldiers who happened to play hockey in their spare time.
There's definitely some truth in your posting, but you need to remember few things. There's a clear difference between IIHF and NHL as far as money is concerned.
The purpose of NHL is to make maximum amount of money for the owners (and give something to players too). Also IIHF needs to make money, but it makes money to arrange international tournaments (the WHC tournament is actually just the tip of the iceberg) and to support hockey development in member countries to grow the game.
In short, the IIHF money is spent in the world of ice hockey. It's beneficial also NHL if the ice hockey gets more popular and markets grow. It doesn't happen without money and NHL is totally NA centric. That's why it's difficult for me to see so negatively if IIHF gets money - from ice hockey world perspective it's definitely better spent than if the money goes to pockets of NHL club owners and players.
Edit. It's ridiculous to expect that IOC would choose the Olympic host based what's most beneficial for one league of one winter sport. Ice hockey is still a bit exotic sport in Winter Olympics and definitely not so important/popular as some ice hockey fans think.
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If the mixed team idea was never taken seriously then it would never have been presented publically to begin with. I can see some idiot in the boardroom coming up with it as part of a brainstorming exercise in which there "there are no wrong answers here" but to float the concept via the media as a trial balloon (and thus paint themselves as insane and/or incompetant) shows that the NHL is taking it seriously.
And I say the NHL is taking it seriously because, unless I'm missing something, the idea has not been shot down. At least not publically. It's still very much on the drawing board.
I've always maintained that it doesn't matter who organizes a best-on-best event (I'd be happy with NHL, KHL, IOC, IIHF etc). But of course that always assumed that national teams would take part as they always have. I never considered in my worst nightmares that I'd have to specify the need for national teams in an international event, as opposed to some joke of an "EU" leftover team, but with the current horde of know-nothings running the NHL, this is actually a point of contention.
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And therein lies the problem. Or a part of it, at least.
Europeans (well, everyone apart from North Americans, really) are used to a certain hierarchy in international sports. There are international federations overruling an entire sport. Then there are regional federations which are lower on the hierarchy. And there is a hierarchy.
It's a structured system. There are laws in place. They have the authority, everything works fine.
In North America most of the popular sports are only popular nationally or regionally. People aren't used to FIFA or FIBA or the IIHF, so we see things like the World Series or NBA champions being called the 'World Champions', where the US and sometimes Canada imagine that they in some magical way represent the entire world.
It does matter who organizes a best-on-best tournament. NHL or KHL has no authority over the sport outside of North America or Russia respectively. They can organize whatever they want, but it's just going to be a private, commercial exhibition tournament with no rights of it being called the World Championship or the World Cup. Well, apart from their imagination, that is.
Frank the Tank
The Godfather
On the first point, yes, the IIHF grows the game. The NHL, however, takes on the majority of the risk in sending elite players to international events in the hope that the IIHF chooses to use a portion of the profits generated to areas from which the NHL could benefit. The NHL doesn't even get access to media footage of their players playing in these events. I hope the NHL continues to send players; however, their risk should be compensated financially (e.g., media access, IIHF pays players' insurance, etc...)
I posted previously that the current Olympic model is flawed because the IOC places numerous demands on the host that benefits the IOC over the host. The IOC has indicated they are willing to change, and has the next few Olympics to demonstrate they are committed to such change. I think the NHL could be one of many entities that approach the IOC and state that if you want to continue demanding cost prohibitive games that are more likely to be awarded to nations like China and Kazakhstan willing to spend the money it takes to put on a show, you will not have access to the NHL players. In such a situation, the IOC can then use this information (one of the many pros and cons for each host) to make a decision.
I suppose that is the difference.
North Americans value the quality of talent while Europeans value which organization signed off on the talent playing.
To each his own.
Jussi
Registered User
Media access is dictated by the broadcasting rights holders. Didn't the NHL get some deal going with NBC this year at Sochi?
The IOC covered all the players insurances.
Jussi
Registered User
It comes down to the structure that organization brings with itself. With IIHF you have decades of history of organizing international tournaments reliably annually.
Frank the Tank
The Godfather
Except they demonstrated a hostile attitude towards Canada and USA, while turning the cheek to the USSR for decades, and they still schedule the WHC tournament on a European hockey friendly schedule. I don't blame them because that is how they make their money. So why does everyone cast the NHL as evil for trying to make money their own way?
Meh. To me the talent counts more than the organizers.
Mikko Koivu beating Carey Price in OT to give Finland the gold doesn't cease to be important if some suits in Switzerland didn't put their names on the event.
I'd say the same thing if the KHL decided to put on an event and Crosby, Toews, Doughty and company agreed to show up along with everyone else's best.
The hockey is what matters to me (provided the organizers don't completely mess it up like the NHL is threatening to do with 2016).
I see no point in whether or not the NHL has authority over the sport, as long as they can successfully negotiate with the IIHF.
The players will put the WC win miles ahead of any World Championship win, even though the WHC is organized "properly" and it's called "the world championship" after all.
I don't see how World Cup is any more commercial than olympics or FIFA World Cup. I guess it depends on what exactly do you mean by "commercial".
I really don't care that much if you or somebody else call it an exhibition or not. The '72 Summit series was also "an exhibition", but the hockey was one of the best ever and that's what is all about. Maybe the winner of WC is not a "world champion" for you, but it's simply the best team in a tournament with the best players and best national teams on the planet that in no way take the games just as "an exhibition". That's the reality.
The IIHf maybe has a right to call the winner of the WHC "the world champions", according to you, but to me, it takes just as much of an imagination.
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If the Premier League decided "hey, let's create a tournament, we will get most of the cash, but I'm sure La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga and Ligue 1 will be fine with that!", do you think it would work? No? Didn't think so.
I don't think the Canadian or American hockey feds getting the shaft from the IIHF a few decades ago has anything to do with the current situation, climate, hierarchy, whatever in international hockey. HC and the IIHF have long since kissed and made up and the relationship seems to be pretty cuddly these days. The NHL would have been perfectly happy if the IIHF ban on NA pro players was never lifted. If the IIHF/IOC ban on NA pros never existed the only difference would be the "will the NHL go to the Olympics (or some other tournament the NHL doesn't control) or not" song and dance would have been around since the 1930s instead of the 1990s.
I think it matters to people because the NHL/NHLPA has done an awful job with the tournament... I mean they haven't even bothered to organize it in over a decade and have only gotten around to it once in the past 18+ years. The fact that from an organization stand point it sounds like the '16 tournament is going to be a less ambitious effort than the previous two editions and they are now running ideas like random miscellaneous teams up the flag pole isn't inspiring a ton of confidence that this is going to be step forward (or even sideways) for international hockey.
The NHL pretty much did just that in 1976, 1981, 1984, 1987, 1991, 1996 and 2004.
Each time most of the best players from the various national teams showed up from the hockey leagues of USSR/Russia, Finland, Sweden, Czech, Slovakia, Germany and Switzerland.
So yeah, it would work.
It would if the English league was as far above those other leagues as the NHL is to those silly Euro leagues.
So, because they haven't ran it as often, makes the tournament less legit? They didn't organize it since 2004 because they felt with the Olympics it was overkill. What exactly was wrong with the tourney in 1996 and 2004? What will be real funny is when the tourney is a success and then we are going into the 2020 tourney and people are still whining about the "mixed" teams that have already been shot down.
Jussi
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