Hockeyville USA
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The Sharks would have a Cup if they didn't trade Brad Boyes for a washed up Curtis Brown. People forget how productive Boyes was in Boston and St Louis
I think pros were allowed to play in '94 anyway.Was Paul Kariya working a 9-5 job in 1994 ? How many Canadian hockey players at the Olympics did ?
The problem with the rules re: amateurs vs professionals is that it created an unequal situation, with the Soviet Union able to dominate in hockey.correct me if i'm wrong on teams like sweden but weren't they actually amateurs and not actually pros being passed off as amateurs by giving them " millitary" designations like the u.s.s.r guys? if not then yes.................strip them too. I think the C.S.S.R was doing the same thing too as they were under the Soviets thumb. Those guys were pros and everyone knows it.................hockey was their profession.
It was cheating and they shouldn't have been getting away with those shenanigans. I hate to hit the Czechs with anything as they had no choice in the matter but the soviet medals for sure should be stripped IMO.
That's not terribly outlandishJacques Plante is the best goalie ever, and probably a top-ten all-time player.
Doug Collins says "right on brother!"The Soviet Union should have all their olympic hockey gold medals stripped from them for circumventing the rules.
And I was nice there by not out and out calling it for what it was...............................plain old cheating.
I wouldnt have had a problem with it either if everyone could have done the same and of course they should have been able to.The problem with the rules re: amateurs vs professionals is that it created an unequal situation, with the Soviet Union able to dominate in hockey.
But I never had a problem with the best Soviet players playing in the Olympics. In fact, I liked it. It's just that everybody else should've been permitted to send their best players too.
Of course we got to that point eventually.
Like, in other sports, we saw the best competing. In downhill skiing, for example, these guys competed all winter against each other on the World Cup circuit. Were they pros? I don't know, but they must have been compensated in some form. And they were the best in the world in their sport.
Hockey should've been the same.
Make no mistake all European countries were sending their best players.correct me if i'm wrong on teams like sweden but weren't they actually amateurs and not actually pros being passed off as amateurs by giving them " millitary" designations like the u.s.s.r guys? if not then yes.................strip them too. I think the C.S.S.R was doing the same thing too as they were under the Soviets thumb. Those guys were pros and everyone knows it.................hockey was their profession.
It was cheating and they shouldn't have been getting away with those shenanigans. I hate to hit the Czechs with anything as they had no choice in the matter but the soviet medals for sure should be stripped IMO.
Doesn't matter what they were paid, whatever they were paid was a hockey salary, they trained as hockey players all year round and got perks the regular population didnt......................hockey was their job hence........they were pros, let's not kid ourselves. Military foot soldier my ass, their task was to be the best hockey players they could be. You can be damn well sure Krutov Fetisov and Makarov weren't dodging bullets in afghanistan.Make no mistake all European countries were sending their best players.
West Germany got a bronze in 76. Here is an interview with Erich Kunhackl who was paid about 120k DM in the early 80s. He played in the Olympics twice.
»Der kriegt was auf die Nase«
SPIEGEL-Interview mit Eishockey-Nationalspieler Erich Kühnhackl *www.spiegel.de
The average salary of a German back in the early 80s was 33k DM
Durchschnittsentgelt – Wikipedia
de.wikipedia.org
The Swedes won several medals throughout the 80s, the Finns got a silver in 88. All of their Who came from the top Swedish, Finnish and Swiss leagues.
I don't know how did the Western Europeans circumvent the rules but in the CSSR (and the USSR) it was the various organizations and businesses that ran hockey teams. Poldi Kladno (the team Jagr played for before coming over to the NHL) was run by the Poldi metallurgical plant and the players were formally employed as the metallurgical workers. So when you read the names of the Eastern Bloc team like Krylya Sovetov Moscow (Soviet Wings), it was a team actually run by the Soviet aircraft manufacturing plant in MoscowThat's the olympics for ya.................corrupt as f*** right to this day.
Their main thing here was just making sure Canada couldn't send it's best and spoil the party for Europe who to this day are their main ass kissers.
What a joke that thing is.............and yet people fawn over that farce.
And what that significantly different than say Canadian that played for the national team ? I feel they all sport and living expense paid and were full-time athlete with the only goal to be the best they could at hockey doing nothing else, people were not sending actual amateur (would an american college player with a giant scholarship just to play sport be that different than the USSR trick ? depend on the college I guess, how real of a student they were)Doesn't matter what they were paid, whatever they were paid was a hockey salary, they trained as hockey players all year round and got perks the regular population didnt......................hockey was their job hence........they were pros, let's not kid ourselves. Military foot soldier my ass, their task was to be the best hockey players they could be.
Doesn't matter what they were paid, whatever they were paid was a hockey salary, they trained as hockey players all year round and got perks the regular population didnt......................hockey was their job hence........they were pros, let's not kid ourselves. Military foot soldier my ass, their task was to be the best hockey players they could be. You can be damn well sure Krutov Fetisov and Makarov weren't dodging bullets in afghanistan.
That's the olympics for ya.................corrupt as f*** right to this day.
Their main thing here was just making sure Canada couldn't send it's best and spoil the party for Europe who to this day are their main ass kissers.
What a joke that thing is.............and yet people fawn over that farce.
Wasn't even the USA involved in that? I remember reading about some top IIHF guy from the USA who was very much against allowing NHLers. There were barely any Americans in the NHL back in the 1960s anyways. It of course makes sense as countries like Sweden or the USA would not be getting many medals had Canada played at full strength. The USSR was very unlikely to not get a medal.Interestingly it was the Western European countries who were initially instrumental in prohibiting Canada/USA from using their best players. See the IIHF congress as late as the early 1950s as proof. This was before the Soviet Union played a single international game.
Countries like Sweden used ‘company teams’ to circumvent the rules.
What, you think Sven Tumba was an amateur player?
And the funny thing is, Canada didn't much care because they were still winning. It wasn't until the Soviet Union entered the contest and started winning everything did Canada have issues with fake amateurism, even though the Soviets were doing nothing different than other countries.
But of course Russia got all the blame for the fake amateurism stuff; they’re the ready-made bad guys.
Wasn't even the USA involved in that? I remember reading about some top IIHF guy from the USA who was very much against allowing NHLers. There were barely any Americans in the NHL back in the 1960s anyways. It of course makes sense as countries like Sweden or the USA would not be getting many medals had Canada played at full strength. The USSR was very unlikely to not get a medal.
I am well aware of how crooked the western European nations were in all of this so what? The Russians were still cheating.Interestingly it was the Western European countries who were initially instrumental in prohibiting Canada/USA from using their best players. See the IIHF congress as late as the early 1950s as proof. This was before the Soviet Union played a single international game.
Countries like Sweden used ‘company teams’ to circumvent the rules.
What, you think Sven Tumba was an amateur player?
And the funny thing is, Canada didn't much care because they were still winning. It wasn't until the Soviet Union entered the contest and started winning everything did Canada have issues with fake amateurism, even though the Soviets were doing nothing different than other countries.
But of course Russia got all the blame for the fake amateurism stuff; they’re the ready-made bad guys.
fine......................then the Canadian nhl players should have been able to play right?And what that significantly different than say Canadian that played for the national team ? I feel they all sport and living expense paid and were full-time athlete with the only goal to be the best they could at hockey doing nothing else, people were not sending actual amateur (would an american college player with a giant scholarship just to play sport be that different than the USSR trick ? depend on the college I guess, how real of a student they were)
Tumba was a 50s and a 60s player, it's likely there was very little money in Swedish hockey back then so he had to have another source of income as well. Things definitely must have changed by the 1970s. I don't know much about Swedish hockey but it seems quite unlikely that they were working full time jobs and played on the side for fun since Germans who have been throughout the entire history of hockey vastly inferior to the Swedes (while having an 8:1 advantage in the number of people) had already a pro league in the 1980 with their star player Erich Kunhackl making 4x the average West German salary. Hockey is also the national sport of Sweden with a huge player base and a huge fanbase. It just makes no sense that they would not pay their players with such a high revenue they were generating.@Overrated @jj cale
You may call it circumventing the rules if you want to, but the way I understood it is the Swedish players indeed had jobs alongside their hockey careers. Teams were sponsored by major employers that would fix jobs for players that would grant them time off for practice and games. From the late 70s onwards, some players would get compensation to go semi-pro. I haven’t done a deep dive into how it worked, but Kent Nilsson said in an interview that he used to get up at 5 AM, work full-time and then go to hockey practice in the evenings, before his club arranged for him to become “halftime pro”. And earning a good living wage playing hockey full time in Sweden didn’t really become commonplace until the 90s.
Sven Tumba was mentioned by @Hanji . Was he a full time professional? I’d wager he had to work like everyone else early on, but he on the one hand married into wealth, and was also able to leverage his hockey stardom and outgoing, charismatic personality into different business deals and sponsorships. He was an entrepreneur. There was of course privilege and opportunity that came from being a famous hockey player in a mixed/open economy like Sweden’s, different from what was presented the players behind the iron curtain, and Tumba was pretty successful in making the best out of it. Certainly a gray area where you can argue the fairness, but alas…
From my perspective, the amateur rules were always an archaic, dumb, bourgeois ideal that should have been ridden off well prior to the fact, and I don’t agree with the sentiment that the Soviets should be stripped of their medals. It’s history now, and a part of the development of our game into what it is today.
Edit: I might add a famous example of Tumba’s entrepreneurial spirit.
He once staged a coup to provide everyone of his teammates a new television, by placing an Electrolux sticker on the front of their helmets and wearing them during a world championship game, which speaks to my point of what was in for the Tre Kronor stars of that day, despite not being professional hockey players. There were certain perks coming from the success and fame, some could leverage it better than others, but little things like posing for an ad for some extra cash, getting bought meals and drinks in restaurants, and the rare opportunity to travel the world were probably considered quite nice features for the amateur hockey star of the day.
I am well aware of how crooked the western European nations were in all of this so what? The Russians were still cheating.
ExactlyOf course. But why single out the Soviets?
Like previously mentioned, the Canadian national team members were full-time hockey players too. It’s a stretch to even call them amateurs .
Seems to me your issue really isn’t with innate pro/amateurism as much as preserving some weird notion of Canadian superiority regardless of who’s doing what.
Then again this thread is titled Unpopular Opinions.
Tumba was a 50s and a 60s player, it's likely there was very little money in Swedish hockey back then so he had to have another source of income as well. Things definitely must have changed by the 1970s. I don't know much about Swedish hockey but it seems quite unlikely that they were working full time jobs and played on the side for fun since Germans who have been throughout the entire history of hockey vastly inferior to the Swedes (while having an 8:1 advantage in the number of people) had already a pro league in the 1980 with their star player Erich Kunhackl making 4x the average West German salary. Hockey is also the national sport of Sweden with a huge player base and a huge fanbase. It just makes no sense that they would not pay their players with such a high revenue they were generating.
Also there already were Canadians in the Swedish league like the WHA player Mike Ford (D) or the NHL player Darwin Mott (LW):
View attachment 886153
Did they also play for free?
They should have (if anyone that is not a rich gentleman or working at 9-5 could) and that rules for gentleman or amateur only was a bad one from the moment Olympics got big.fine......................then the Canadian nhl players should have been able to play right?
Were they?
Tumba was a 50s and a 60s player, it's likely there was very little money in Swedish hockey back then so he had to have another source of income as well. Things definitely must have changed by the 1970s. I don't know much about Swedish hockey but it seems quite unlikely that they were working full time jobs and played on the side for fun since Germans who have been throughout the entire history of hockey vastly inferior to the Swedes (while having an 8:1 advantage in the number of people) had already a pro league in the 1980 with their star player Erich Kunhackl making 4x the average West German salary. Hockey is also the national sport of Sweden with a huge player base and a huge fanbase. It just makes no sense that they would not pay their players with such a high revenue they were generating.
Also there already were Canadians in the Swedish league like the WHA player Mike Ford (D) or the NHL player Darwin Mott (LW):
View attachment 886153
Did they also play for free?
I don't know either. But it's mentioned in the parting-ways announcements that he signed a contract with Rogle B.K. so, fair to say that there was money involved assumedly; also I found this in The Hockey News.... It’s probably safe to say there was some money in it for them in going there, but I’m not sure how it was worked out.
“I have a good job in Sweden, and I can also play hockey there,” said Sterner, who will make up his mind in the spring.
‘‘Hockey is more fun in Europe. Here you don’t pass as much, and it’s a rougher game. I was not the worst player on the Rangers, but I needed more experience.
“It’s easier in the NHL. They play harder and faster, but not as rough as the AHL.
“I’m not sure I’m coming back.”
Sterner, 6-2 and 185 pounds, has been rattled with elbows and body checks, and hasn’t retaliated. He was benched briefly by Coach John Crawford of Baltimore, and has been shifted from line to line.
“He hasn’t been happy here,” said a Baltimore source, close to the Clippers. “They hit him all the time, and I think he feels there are too many games. He feels hockey is a business here, not a sport.”