This is one of my favourites. Basically the players don't matter, only the governing body does. Absurd. I never knew that some European fans cared so much about bureaucracy, to the point that it overshadowed the actual players.
I think if the NHL/PA had done a better job running and building the CC/WCup over the years people would harp about the tournaments controlling 'bureaucracy' a lot less. When it comes to building a world tournament that is universally valued as the be-all and end-all the caliber of the players involved is obviously important but so are a lot of other things. The organizers of CC/WCup have done a horrible job at those other 'things'. I can understand why some don't give the tournament a lot of cred or have faith that the NHL/PA is committed to building it into something that more closely resembles some of the major international tournaments we see in other sports. Just look at its history...
Despite the Soviet Union and the NHL itself not exactly being fully onboard the first tournament got things off to a pretty promising start. Then came the '79 edition...
Partly due to internal squabbling amongst various parties within Canada the '79 CC ended up being played in '81. Once the tournament did start things didn't get much better as poor attendance had Eagleson threatening to scrap any future tournaments. To top everything off the Soviets weren't allowed to take the trophy home with them.
Probably fair to say things improved over the next 10 years/3 tournaments. It produced some memorable moments which helped local interest rebound but I am not sure if any effort was really made to try to build it into anything that had a profile outside of Canada. Organizers still couldn't figure out how to stage the thing at regular intervals.
The '96 tournament seemed like an ambitious step forward...
-Rebranding to the WCup
-Expanding to 8 teams
-Games in Europe
...The organizers built on this by not holding a another tournament for 8 years.
The '04 tournament is probably most notable for being scheduled to end a couple hours before the two co-organizers would blow up an an entire NHL season.
We are now at 10 years and counting since the last tournament was held.
For all of the IIHF's (and WC) faults and flaws they have still managed to figure out plenty of the 'things' the NHL/PA is eventually going to have to figure out if they want the WCup to reach its full potential, such as...
Figuring out the apparently complex task of holding a tournament on a regular and conistent bases. Some might argue the WC is too regular and consistent but it is still preferable to a system that as far as I can tell is built on a premise of 'the next tournament will be held if/when we get our $#!& together'.
An open and defined qualifying system. Teams should be able to play their way in by beating other teams on the ice. I don't see why people think giving any country/federation interested a chance to play their way into a 'World' Cup is an unreasonable position. It is certainly a better system than picking the participating teams based on how many NHLers they have.
An open and defined process to bid for the right to host the event. Any country/federation that is interested in hosting (at least some games) should have the oppurtunity to make their case for doing so. A 'World' Cup shouldn't mean some countries always playing at home while others never get the chance to even bid for the privildge.
In the IIHF any country/federation that has put in the time and effort to join the IIHF and participate in the WC program also has a voice in how things are run and the oppurtunity to benefit from their involvement. I don't expect the NHL to care about what the Belgium Ice Hockey Federation has to say about matters pertaining to WCup but unless this is going to be limited to a 3 or 4 team exhibition style event national federations and other leagues are going to have some form of involvement. I think they should be allowed to have a voice and benefit from their involvment.
With all that said, who knows... Maybe at this point the NHL envisions future WCups as nothing more than a 'fun' event to help hype the upcoming NHL season.
