PurpleMouse
Registered User
- Apr 27, 2014
- 401
- 182
So it's the eve of/day of the World Cup and leading up to this tournament hfboards has been violently ill about the tournament. It's interesting to me to see that feedback I see OFF this message board is decidedly mixed (some indifferent, some positivity, and mild negativity) compared to here where there is a large group of people content on bashing the tournament to the point where it seems they want you to think that if you are excited for this tournament, you should feel embarassed and you're not a real fan and it's a disgrace and blah blah blah.
I'm probably in a real small minority as most people here seem to hate the two "gimmick" teams but others are all on board thinking it will make things more entertaining. I think the U23 team is a massive gimmick... but Team Europe is great, IMO, and it still fits the mantra of an international tournament.
Reading the venom of posters here leads me to the following thoughts... keeping in mind these are all in respect to Team Europe and I do think U23 is a gimmick (albeit a fun one to watch.)
The concept of Team Europe more accurately represents the hockey landscape
A World Cup should accurately represent the best nations and best players in the world of that sport. The WC has its roots in the Canada Cup, which always had six teams- all of nations with players making impact in the NHL/WHA (Canada/USA/Sweden/Finland) or players everyone knew could if not for political rammifications (Czechoslavkia/USSR).
I wouldn't be offended if Slovakia had a team in this tournament, but post-Czech split they have never universally gained respect from hockey fans (you always had a super six vs super seven debates). Slovakia was represented in the 96 & 04 World Cups and you had to have an 8th team to fill out the field.
However there was never any semblance of star power outside those seven teams.... before ten years ago, you couldn't name many players outside of the big 6/7 that were making a big impact in the NHL. Now, you can... but while individuals have popped up as contributors but not to the point of making any nation itself making an impact.
Quite simply, if someone asked you, "where do NHL stars come from? (keeping in mind that's the league 90% or so of the best of the world's players play in)", you'd probably say... "Well, Canada, USA, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Czech... and there's some good players from other places too."
And this field (minus U23) reflects that.
International play in hockey has been made exciting by super teams
Whenever the Olympics or World Cup roll around, you see tweets and articles from news reporters about the massive cap hits of Canada, USA, Sweden, etc if they played in the NHL. That's probably not as such as the case with a Finland but they have genuine star power to play a talented spoiler.
When you're inviting team like Switzerland, you're not only inviting a team that isn't a super team… you're inviting a team that legitimately might not make the NHL playoffs... or could even finish at the bottom of the league. I don't doubt there are players in their domestic league that are interchanagable with guys in the NHL... but the lower part of the NHL.
It's pretty strange when you're getting excited about a tournament with larger than life teams substantially BETTER than the ones we usually see in league play, to get amped up to see ones that are arguably WORSE than what we see in league play.
People will cite examples of the Swiss, Belarus, Latvia getting results against stronger teams but one game doesn't prove superiority of one team over the other. The best team in any hockey league loses at least dozens of games a year. If the best team in the NHL could lose to the worst team in the NHL (which does happen at times), then they could lose to teams in lower leagues too. It's not like there is a magic cut off at #30. Which is why you see upsets in international hockey.
Anyway, more about these upsets later...
Sports often take the shape of their home base
Hockey is a sport that's rooted in North America. It's where the majority of its best players come from, it's where it originated. So it would make sense some of its customs would be based along the lines of how North Americans think about sports.
You'll often see threads with posters fantasizing about these elabroate proposals of Champions Leagues involving NHL teams and dreaming of international play like we see in soccer with breaks in the league schedule for international play. That doesn't happen in hockey, and it's not because North American customs are better or worse than European ones.
It's just because that type of schedule isn't/wasn't condusive to the way hockey grew. The sport would never grow in leagues along domestic lines because Canadian cities could be so much closer to American cities than other Canadian cities, and vice versa. And frequent international competition would be grossly impractical because the two countries only have ONE close-by international opponent. So it made sense for one dominant league and international play to happen over a set lengthy period of time.
So what does that have to do with this World Cup?
Well, North American pro sports also are based on the idea that if you're participating in a competition… you should be able to ~WIN~ the competition. The NHL and NFL have salary caps to create parity. Even leagues that appear to not have parity, like the NBA, can see teams massively turn it around from year to year. Every team is in the competition to actually WIN the competition. It's not about avoiding relegation or that memorable mid-season game where your team knocked off a powerhouse.
Which is why when people post examples of "magical" upsets (see below) it doesn't resonate with some posters here. I don't think most intelligent posters doubt that a Switzerland or a Germany could win a single game in the tournament... but actually win it? I think it was Elliot Friedman that posted a stat that something like 95% of medals in recent tournaments had been won by the big six. But yes, those lower teams can win games.. but…
Upsets don't make for good games in the long run
Remember Belarus beating Sweden in 2002? Sure.
Remember the awesome semi-final between Belarus & Canada and the equally awesome bronze medal game between Russia & Belarus?
No, you probably don't. Because both of those games were boring blowouts. For as crazy a story as the Tommy Salo moment was, can you imagine how epic a Canada/Sweden game would have been? Six years removed from their 96 WC classic and just over a week removed from Sweden's stunning win at the beginning of the tournament? Certainly a better storyline that the Belarus game provided.
(Sidenote: you hear the cliche about growing the game from these tournaments and how the Olympics are much better suited to do that.... where's that massive uptick in quality players from Belarus that saw the big win over Sweden as kids?)
The only true cinderella that has had "sustained" success in a best on best tournaments with NHL players is when Switzerland beat both Canada & the Czechs back to back in 2006. And Switzerland was so "convincing" in those two wins that Sweden decided it was in their best interest to throw a round robin game to secure a match up with them- which Sweden promptly won and then subsequently won the gold medal. The same Sweden that should have been fearing being taken out by the underog after what happened four years prior… but they weren’t, and they were correct not to be. Boy, what an inspiring story.
"Mixed" teams aren't unentertaining
I've heard it said that this event is bad because it's not a true international competition, you have international teams and then all-star teams. But why is that a bad thing?
There is history in hockey for "mixed" competitions being successful. The 79 Challenge Cup and Rendez Vous 87 were both examples of a league all-star team against a national team. In 74 Team WHA was playing for both the pride of their national AND their league. I don't think anyone would say that those weren't entertaining competitive events. And also...
"Mixed" teams aren't unprecedented in World Cups
World cups in other sports have had teams that don't represent actual nations. The box lacrosse world cup features a team for the Iroquois Nations (which is certainly a meaningful distinction, but creates ambiguity in a tournament with Canada & USA in it... hmm... sound familiar?)
Even the almighty soccer isn't consistent in terms of international competition because the UK is unified in the Olympics, but play separately in the World Cup. Also, there has discussion about Carribean nations combining a unified team for the purpose of international play.
Someone also brought up the incredibly leaninent rules regardless who plays for who in the baseball classic...
How about Team West Indies in the cricket world cup? Do people protest this? They've actually WON the world cup on MULTIPLE occasions- and that's a sport that has MUCH more of a following than hockey does. Run for the hills! Oh, but it's been like that forever, you say?
"Tradition" is a silly reason to justify doing/not doing something
Every once in a while in one of these threads you'll see a pro-Team Europe post ask how this is different than the Ryder Cup. The typical (dumb) response is "yeah but that has history!" But anything that has history... at some point, didn't. It has no bearing on whether it’s a good idea or not.
Professional pride
As I said above, I'm not a fan of the U23 team, however, I AM amused by the idea that players on U23 won't try or would throw it when playing against Canada/USA.
I have no doubt that there are many patriotic people in this tournament. But.. there are plenty of people who aren't patriotic. But if only 60% of people (random number) are truly patriotic, then why do most (ie, way higher than 60%) players participate in high end international tournaments?
Probably because the tournament is just as much about, if not more about, athletic accomplishment than it is about representation of your country. Think of all the players you see from Canada that play for other countries when they aren't good enough to play for Canada. They still try their hardest when playing for their new countries.
Do you think Paul diPietro was genuinely torn when he scored against Canada in the 2006 Olympics? Or do you think he appreciated the fact that beating Canada was a big deal and wanted to be a part of that? Like Anze Kopitar has the chance to now... except, for Kopitar and his teammates, they actually have a chance to win the tournament itself.
Do you think Brett Hull and Adam Deadmarsh had disdain for the country of Canada itself in 1996? Or did they play their hearts out for the USA for that particular group of guys, their team, that they were playing for? How about Claude Lemieux on the other side who became an American citizen after his career was over (as did many others on that Canadian team, I’m sure.) Guys play for themselves, their teammates, and accolades.
A World Cup is a big accomplishment, something that you could see mentioned in a spiel of a guy's Hall of Fame credentials. That's not something to play for?
Also, as Zdeno Chara said, these guys really are representing their own countries in their own way. Chara is Slovakian- one of six on the Europe team, the most of any country. The Europe selection committee decided there 15 or so better players than the next best Slovakian. If THIS team loses, it makes team Europe look bad- but the countries comprising the team even worse. Team Europe doing extremely well would make a STRONGER case for the countries on the team to be inidvidually represented- not a worse one.
(People will point out systems, chemistry, etc. etc... I'm not buying it. These days so much knowledge has been spread around, stolen, whatever term you want to use... the odds of a coach preaching something a player hasn't seen before are probably not high. And with the way players move around their odds of having chemistry/familiarity with some of another nation is pretty much on par with someone of their own country.)
Flawed comparisons to FIFA/Olympics
I've read a lot of posts about how there should be eight teams, a qualifying process, etc. With comparisons to how things work in the soccer World Cup. And how this event can't be the truly great event that the soccer World Cup is.
Let's remember that international soccer is constantly dealing with match fixing scandals. Don't see that being an issue in this World Cup. It's not being played in Qatar either.
Oh, and as for proper qualifying? Well how about how in the lead up to 2014, USA rolled through CONCACAF, Mexico ~barely~ qualified and yet Mexico ends up in a substantial easier group somehow. (And also the fact that the amount of spots given to each region are pretty arbitrary as well and somewhat political.) FIFA’s qualification is hardly perfect.
So people can crap on the NHL for playing god and just picking which teams should be there (based on common sense and the fact that you can observe players in their respective leagues and the success of nations from past tournaments), but is that worse than how other sports do it? As said above… acknowedlging the fact that other countries CAN pull an upset is as much of a reason to REDUCE the field as it is to increase it… why have a team that’s good enough to fluke out a win but not good enough to sustain the success bring down the level of play in the tournament?
As for the Olympics.. I certainly would like to see Olympic participation continue (although I like the game a bit better on small ice). But I think posters overstate the sancticty of hockey at the Olympics and how players won't stand for exclusion. The NHL (and in the 70s, the WHA) didn't stop their season for the Olympics then, and it didn't stop Europeans from coming over then... so why would it now?
There are no secrets anymore.
I've seen the argument that you don't know how these lesser nations will do if you don't give them a chance. However, there are eyes and video everywhere and it's not really possible for a league or unknown source of talent to just pop up. Every pro league is scouted, as are IIHF tournaments.
It's actually probably better for the development of lesser countries when they play in the Worlds. There, they are playing rosters that are watered down but still have power and you can still get excited about beating, and have more regularly competitive games against. So the worlds serves a puprose as devevelopmental tournament. That's not what the World Cup needs to be.
Probably a longer post than it should be and probably a lot of typos since I didn't proof read but I feel it's been presented here by so many that Team Europe is a bad idea that it would be a good idea to actually put the issues all in one place and actually look at the postiives this team could bring to the tournament.
I wouldn't have been opposed to Slovakia in this tournament but they are probably the weakest they've been in a while now. If someone asks me if Switzerland or Slovakia could win the World Cup, I'm pretty confident I know the answer is "no". If someone asks me if "the field" can win the World Cup, I don't know the answer... but I'm interested to watch and play out. Give it a chance!
I'm probably in a real small minority as most people here seem to hate the two "gimmick" teams but others are all on board thinking it will make things more entertaining. I think the U23 team is a massive gimmick... but Team Europe is great, IMO, and it still fits the mantra of an international tournament.
Reading the venom of posters here leads me to the following thoughts... keeping in mind these are all in respect to Team Europe and I do think U23 is a gimmick (albeit a fun one to watch.)
The concept of Team Europe more accurately represents the hockey landscape
A World Cup should accurately represent the best nations and best players in the world of that sport. The WC has its roots in the Canada Cup, which always had six teams- all of nations with players making impact in the NHL/WHA (Canada/USA/Sweden/Finland) or players everyone knew could if not for political rammifications (Czechoslavkia/USSR).
I wouldn't be offended if Slovakia had a team in this tournament, but post-Czech split they have never universally gained respect from hockey fans (you always had a super six vs super seven debates). Slovakia was represented in the 96 & 04 World Cups and you had to have an 8th team to fill out the field.
However there was never any semblance of star power outside those seven teams.... before ten years ago, you couldn't name many players outside of the big 6/7 that were making a big impact in the NHL. Now, you can... but while individuals have popped up as contributors but not to the point of making any nation itself making an impact.
Quite simply, if someone asked you, "where do NHL stars come from? (keeping in mind that's the league 90% or so of the best of the world's players play in)", you'd probably say... "Well, Canada, USA, Russia, Sweden, Finland, Czech... and there's some good players from other places too."
And this field (minus U23) reflects that.
International play in hockey has been made exciting by super teams
Whenever the Olympics or World Cup roll around, you see tweets and articles from news reporters about the massive cap hits of Canada, USA, Sweden, etc if they played in the NHL. That's probably not as such as the case with a Finland but they have genuine star power to play a talented spoiler.
When you're inviting team like Switzerland, you're not only inviting a team that isn't a super team… you're inviting a team that legitimately might not make the NHL playoffs... or could even finish at the bottom of the league. I don't doubt there are players in their domestic league that are interchanagable with guys in the NHL... but the lower part of the NHL.
It's pretty strange when you're getting excited about a tournament with larger than life teams substantially BETTER than the ones we usually see in league play, to get amped up to see ones that are arguably WORSE than what we see in league play.
People will cite examples of the Swiss, Belarus, Latvia getting results against stronger teams but one game doesn't prove superiority of one team over the other. The best team in any hockey league loses at least dozens of games a year. If the best team in the NHL could lose to the worst team in the NHL (which does happen at times), then they could lose to teams in lower leagues too. It's not like there is a magic cut off at #30. Which is why you see upsets in international hockey.
Anyway, more about these upsets later...
Sports often take the shape of their home base
Hockey is a sport that's rooted in North America. It's where the majority of its best players come from, it's where it originated. So it would make sense some of its customs would be based along the lines of how North Americans think about sports.
You'll often see threads with posters fantasizing about these elabroate proposals of Champions Leagues involving NHL teams and dreaming of international play like we see in soccer with breaks in the league schedule for international play. That doesn't happen in hockey, and it's not because North American customs are better or worse than European ones.
It's just because that type of schedule isn't/wasn't condusive to the way hockey grew. The sport would never grow in leagues along domestic lines because Canadian cities could be so much closer to American cities than other Canadian cities, and vice versa. And frequent international competition would be grossly impractical because the two countries only have ONE close-by international opponent. So it made sense for one dominant league and international play to happen over a set lengthy period of time.
So what does that have to do with this World Cup?
Well, North American pro sports also are based on the idea that if you're participating in a competition… you should be able to ~WIN~ the competition. The NHL and NFL have salary caps to create parity. Even leagues that appear to not have parity, like the NBA, can see teams massively turn it around from year to year. Every team is in the competition to actually WIN the competition. It's not about avoiding relegation or that memorable mid-season game where your team knocked off a powerhouse.
Which is why when people post examples of "magical" upsets (see below) it doesn't resonate with some posters here. I don't think most intelligent posters doubt that a Switzerland or a Germany could win a single game in the tournament... but actually win it? I think it was Elliot Friedman that posted a stat that something like 95% of medals in recent tournaments had been won by the big six. But yes, those lower teams can win games.. but…
Upsets don't make for good games in the long run
Remember Belarus beating Sweden in 2002? Sure.
Remember the awesome semi-final between Belarus & Canada and the equally awesome bronze medal game between Russia & Belarus?
No, you probably don't. Because both of those games were boring blowouts. For as crazy a story as the Tommy Salo moment was, can you imagine how epic a Canada/Sweden game would have been? Six years removed from their 96 WC classic and just over a week removed from Sweden's stunning win at the beginning of the tournament? Certainly a better storyline that the Belarus game provided.
(Sidenote: you hear the cliche about growing the game from these tournaments and how the Olympics are much better suited to do that.... where's that massive uptick in quality players from Belarus that saw the big win over Sweden as kids?)
The only true cinderella that has had "sustained" success in a best on best tournaments with NHL players is when Switzerland beat both Canada & the Czechs back to back in 2006. And Switzerland was so "convincing" in those two wins that Sweden decided it was in their best interest to throw a round robin game to secure a match up with them- which Sweden promptly won and then subsequently won the gold medal. The same Sweden that should have been fearing being taken out by the underog after what happened four years prior… but they weren’t, and they were correct not to be. Boy, what an inspiring story.
"Mixed" teams aren't unentertaining
I've heard it said that this event is bad because it's not a true international competition, you have international teams and then all-star teams. But why is that a bad thing?
There is history in hockey for "mixed" competitions being successful. The 79 Challenge Cup and Rendez Vous 87 were both examples of a league all-star team against a national team. In 74 Team WHA was playing for both the pride of their national AND their league. I don't think anyone would say that those weren't entertaining competitive events. And also...
"Mixed" teams aren't unprecedented in World Cups
World cups in other sports have had teams that don't represent actual nations. The box lacrosse world cup features a team for the Iroquois Nations (which is certainly a meaningful distinction, but creates ambiguity in a tournament with Canada & USA in it... hmm... sound familiar?)
Even the almighty soccer isn't consistent in terms of international competition because the UK is unified in the Olympics, but play separately in the World Cup. Also, there has discussion about Carribean nations combining a unified team for the purpose of international play.
Someone also brought up the incredibly leaninent rules regardless who plays for who in the baseball classic...
How about Team West Indies in the cricket world cup? Do people protest this? They've actually WON the world cup on MULTIPLE occasions- and that's a sport that has MUCH more of a following than hockey does. Run for the hills! Oh, but it's been like that forever, you say?
"Tradition" is a silly reason to justify doing/not doing something
Every once in a while in one of these threads you'll see a pro-Team Europe post ask how this is different than the Ryder Cup. The typical (dumb) response is "yeah but that has history!" But anything that has history... at some point, didn't. It has no bearing on whether it’s a good idea or not.
Professional pride
As I said above, I'm not a fan of the U23 team, however, I AM amused by the idea that players on U23 won't try or would throw it when playing against Canada/USA.
I have no doubt that there are many patriotic people in this tournament. But.. there are plenty of people who aren't patriotic. But if only 60% of people (random number) are truly patriotic, then why do most (ie, way higher than 60%) players participate in high end international tournaments?
Probably because the tournament is just as much about, if not more about, athletic accomplishment than it is about representation of your country. Think of all the players you see from Canada that play for other countries when they aren't good enough to play for Canada. They still try their hardest when playing for their new countries.
Do you think Paul diPietro was genuinely torn when he scored against Canada in the 2006 Olympics? Or do you think he appreciated the fact that beating Canada was a big deal and wanted to be a part of that? Like Anze Kopitar has the chance to now... except, for Kopitar and his teammates, they actually have a chance to win the tournament itself.
Do you think Brett Hull and Adam Deadmarsh had disdain for the country of Canada itself in 1996? Or did they play their hearts out for the USA for that particular group of guys, their team, that they were playing for? How about Claude Lemieux on the other side who became an American citizen after his career was over (as did many others on that Canadian team, I’m sure.) Guys play for themselves, their teammates, and accolades.
A World Cup is a big accomplishment, something that you could see mentioned in a spiel of a guy's Hall of Fame credentials. That's not something to play for?
Also, as Zdeno Chara said, these guys really are representing their own countries in their own way. Chara is Slovakian- one of six on the Europe team, the most of any country. The Europe selection committee decided there 15 or so better players than the next best Slovakian. If THIS team loses, it makes team Europe look bad- but the countries comprising the team even worse. Team Europe doing extremely well would make a STRONGER case for the countries on the team to be inidvidually represented- not a worse one.
(People will point out systems, chemistry, etc. etc... I'm not buying it. These days so much knowledge has been spread around, stolen, whatever term you want to use... the odds of a coach preaching something a player hasn't seen before are probably not high. And with the way players move around their odds of having chemistry/familiarity with some of another nation is pretty much on par with someone of their own country.)
Flawed comparisons to FIFA/Olympics
I've read a lot of posts about how there should be eight teams, a qualifying process, etc. With comparisons to how things work in the soccer World Cup. And how this event can't be the truly great event that the soccer World Cup is.
Let's remember that international soccer is constantly dealing with match fixing scandals. Don't see that being an issue in this World Cup. It's not being played in Qatar either.
Oh, and as for proper qualifying? Well how about how in the lead up to 2014, USA rolled through CONCACAF, Mexico ~barely~ qualified and yet Mexico ends up in a substantial easier group somehow. (And also the fact that the amount of spots given to each region are pretty arbitrary as well and somewhat political.) FIFA’s qualification is hardly perfect.
So people can crap on the NHL for playing god and just picking which teams should be there (based on common sense and the fact that you can observe players in their respective leagues and the success of nations from past tournaments), but is that worse than how other sports do it? As said above… acknowedlging the fact that other countries CAN pull an upset is as much of a reason to REDUCE the field as it is to increase it… why have a team that’s good enough to fluke out a win but not good enough to sustain the success bring down the level of play in the tournament?
As for the Olympics.. I certainly would like to see Olympic participation continue (although I like the game a bit better on small ice). But I think posters overstate the sancticty of hockey at the Olympics and how players won't stand for exclusion. The NHL (and in the 70s, the WHA) didn't stop their season for the Olympics then, and it didn't stop Europeans from coming over then... so why would it now?
There are no secrets anymore.
I've seen the argument that you don't know how these lesser nations will do if you don't give them a chance. However, there are eyes and video everywhere and it's not really possible for a league or unknown source of talent to just pop up. Every pro league is scouted, as are IIHF tournaments.
It's actually probably better for the development of lesser countries when they play in the Worlds. There, they are playing rosters that are watered down but still have power and you can still get excited about beating, and have more regularly competitive games against. So the worlds serves a puprose as devevelopmental tournament. That's not what the World Cup needs to be.
Probably a longer post than it should be and probably a lot of typos since I didn't proof read but I feel it's been presented here by so many that Team Europe is a bad idea that it would be a good idea to actually put the issues all in one place and actually look at the postiives this team could bring to the tournament.
I wouldn't have been opposed to Slovakia in this tournament but they are probably the weakest they've been in a while now. If someone asks me if Switzerland or Slovakia could win the World Cup, I'm pretty confident I know the answer is "no". If someone asks me if "the field" can win the World Cup, I don't know the answer... but I'm interested to watch and play out. Give it a chance!
Incredible and amazing post.
