Even though the opening ceremonies for the Winter Games were Friday, the NHL played games throughout the weekend, only breaking today to allow its players to leave for Vancouver to chase down a gold medal for their respective nations. It’s the fourth time, beginning in 1998, the league has done so, its prime motivation being to capitalize on the Olympic fever and sell its players–if not its product–to new fans. With the league’s recent labor strife and its unstable television presence during that 12-year period, it’s difficult to guage whether or not the NHL has been successful. But one sports columnist out there has seen enough.
The 1980 USA “Miracle on Ice” team is memorable because they were dragon slayers. A bunch of college kids, most of them unwanted by the NHL, beat a team of Soviet pros.
That kind of storyline can’t happen in this Olympics. One team of NHL players will beat another team of NHL players. That isn’t good for the Olympics, and it really doesn’t do the NHL much good, either.–John Mehno/Beaver County Times.
Haha, “Beaver.”
Sure, the Games make for better press when the athletes are starving to death or maxing out all their credit cards for their one shot at Olympic gold, a la figure skating’s Mark Ladwig, but it’s not hockey’s fault that the sport actually has a functioning professional league (for now, anyway…zing?), one that cultivates and promotes talent better than other winter sports. I’d rather see USA Hockey do what soccer does: maintain a single, actual team and schedule exhibition games throughout the year. If being on Team USA was more of a responsibility and less of a vacation from one’s regular job, we’d certainly have more hockey players that we could gush over like we do in the other winter sports. And less property damage, too.
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Would you rather watch the superstars play or some asshole from Bemidji State? Fuck you, Beaver guy.
One point not made is that these millionaire professionals are happy and excited to represent their respective countries. Ovechkin has already said he will play for Russia whether the NHL breaks or not for the 2014 games.
The fact that they don’t have to commit to the team for a year makes it all the more enticing. Look at basketball, where the commitment required makes guys drop out all the time.
The Olympics is the perfect platform for the best of the best in hockey to showcase their talents. It’s much better than the alternative, having a World Cup of hockey/Canada Cup in August. Gary Bettemen always screws something up with those tournaments.
And outside of Canada and the US, there isn’t one other team that has a full team consisting of all NHL players. The parody is amazing, as all 6 teams that have made it to the finals in the first three Olympics were from different nations.
If we go back to pre-1998 Olympics, then all we’ll ever see (like before) is the best of the KHL (the Russian pro league which is still seen as amateur status)taking on the best players from the Czech Republic or Sweden. Russia will win every bloody Olympics with Sweden and Finland and the Czech Republic rotating losses.
This column writer must forget when a team of no name Belarussians beat the favorite to win the gold (sweden) in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olynpics. I think that upset far surpassed the miracle on ice.