Ice-hockey World Championship 2019

[ursus arctos]

Yes, they have (as have the Khazaks and the Ukrainians)

The tournament went from eight to twelve in 1991 and from twelve to sixteen in 1998.

[ad hoc]

Glad to see some people are enjoying this tournament. I never really understood the point of having an annual world championship when so many of the best players couldn’t play, but that also makes for more interesting games, perhaps.

I think it would be difficult, if not impossible (and, not by-the-by, ridiculous) to hold the world ice hockey championship in summer. This is really about as late as they could reasonably hold it. All the European leagues have finished. Seems to me the fault /problem lies with the NHL rather than anyone else.

[Hot Pepsi]

Why is what Europe wants inherently more important? Why does there need to be an annual “world championship” at all?

It’s not impossible to have it in the summer. The proper World Cup/Canada Cup was in the summer. It wasn’t ideal, but it was more of a true world championship than this.

The Stanley Cup is an older and more prestigious competition and it’s a lot more important to many - perhaps most - players and fans, and for good reason.

Unless I missed something, it’s only ever played in Europe and only Europeans* seem to really care about it. So they might as well just make it the European Championship.


*Although with expanded TV coverage and no Canadian teams left in the playoffs, some Canadians might be starting to care.

[ad hoc]

It's not about what "Europe" wants (assuming that Europe is some kind of homogenous entity with only one view on these things for the sake of argument). I get the importance and age of the Stanley Cup, though there is nothing in the rules that suggests that the Stanley Cup has to finish in June. And OK it is not impossible to hold an ice hockey event in summer (my emphasis), but it is bloody stupid. Why not move the Olympic Ice Hockey tournament to the summer games while we're at it?

The CL is in some way a "better" competition, with more powerful squads than the World Cup, and I am sure that there a lot of football fans who prefer it. But that doesn;t mean we should dump the world cup.

(I can see the argument for not having a world championship every year, and perhaps like many sports every two years would make more sense. But then there are all the other promotion/relegation spots and "lower league" nations for whom it is a big deal. Romania went up from Group 1B to Group 1A this year, and being able to work with that squad, annually in important competition like this is really important (if we think that having national teams at all is worthwhile).

I have no idea whether there has ever been any suggestion that the WC should be in North America, there must have been discussions about it at some point, and I have no idea why it hasn't happened (it seems to me just as likely that it is the NHL rather than the IIHF which has been against it). South Korea were in the top world group last year, and perhaps if they can build their team up a bit and become more of a permanent fixture there it would go there.

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

As an infrequent ice hockey watcher (first got into this championship four years ago when we went to Riga and everyone in the hotel was loudly cheering against Russia) it always strikes me that they don't half cram the matches in. The groups involve teams playing seven times in 10 days and then there's only one rest day before the last four play semi-finals and final over a weekend. It's quite a contrast to rugby or football. Even the cricketers get a few days off between matches. As ice hockey seems a pretty brutal sport, physically, are the players just superhuman or something, like tennis players?

[ad hoc]

As an infrequent ice hockey watcher (first got into this championship four years ago when we went to Riga and everyone in the hotel was loudly cheering against Russia) it always strikes me that they don't half cram the matches in. The groups involve teams playing seven times in 10 days and then there's only one rest day before the last four play semi-finals and final over a weekend. It's quite a contrast to rugby or football. Even the cricketers get a few days off between matches. As ice hockey seems a pretty brutal sport, physically, are the players just superhuman or something, like tennis players?

I think they are pretty superhuman as it goes, though they do only tend to stay on the ice for a couple of minutes at a time in 3 or 4 "lines", which makes a difference.

[Snake Plissken]

Hot Pepsi - Just because the US/Canada don't consider it important doesn't mean everyone else doesn't.

It exists because it is the premier international competition organised by the governing body of the sport. It is the NHL that is the separate organisation here. The Canada Cup was organised by Alan Eagleson as a way to make money for NHL players and by holding it in the summer, it will always be a pre-season warmup.

[ursus arctos]

Exactly.

The number of North Americans who have begged off participation even though their clubs are no longer competing for the Cup is evidence that moving the tournament wouldn't solve the "problem" either.

As usual, the exceptionalism attitude is our loss.

[jameswba]

When I moved to Slovakia, I was mystified by the appeal of this annual championship that could never feature the very top players, but I was seeing European ice-hockey through too much of a football lens. A few random thoughts :

1. In the Czech and Slovak Republics, it is without question the most eagerly awaited sports event in any given year. A major tennis final featuring (say) Petra Kvitova, or a World Championship where Peter Sagan is racing would be the closest you'd get.

2. It's a manageable thing for a smaller, hockey-loving nation to organise.

3. A European Championship would be fun, but Canada and the US add hugely to the competition and are two of three or four sides that everyone wants to beat.

4. The speculation beforehand about which NHL-based players are coming to play for whatever given nation can get tedious, and are often beside the point. In 2011, the last time they hosted the tournament, Slovakia had pretty much all their NHL stars and were rubbish. A year later, a lot of those players had retired/refused to play and a team of relative unknowns finished second.

5. To what extent do Canada / the USA care about whether hockey is an international / inter-continental sport?

[jameswba]

As ice hockey seems a pretty brutal sport, physically, are the players just superhuman or something, like tennis players?

The skill, speed and strength of the top players is unbelievable. Hockey produces at least as many 'how the fuck did that just happen?' moments as any sport. Below the very best teams/players, performances can fluctuate. GB, for example, performed creditably against Germany, and even Canada, but have been truly hopeless today vs Denmark (0-8 down a minute into the 3rd period).

[ad hoc]

Pretty bad day at the office for GB

[ursus arctos]

o what extent do Canada / the USA care about whether hockey is an international / inter-continental sport?

Traditionally, not very much at all, but there are some signs that that is changing among the current generation of players, in part because they all play with Europeans who take it very seriously.

[Amor de Cosmos]

5. To what extent do Canada / the USA care about whether hockey is an international / inter-continental sport?

---

It depends, I think, on how you define Canada/USA. To begin with attitudes in both countries are quite different. In the US Hockey is the fourth biggest spectator sport at best, (maybe second-third in the North East.) In Canada it's the national religion. I'm sure if the UK Ice Hockey league ran during the summer, and it's games were televised here it would outdraw baseball, MLS, and the CFL. In spite of the WC conflicting with the later stages of the Stanley Cup play-offs, most of the games are televised live and draw huge audiences. How much Canadian fans care about the international reach of the game is difficult to assess. European players are almost as common in the NHL as European footballers in the EPL. With exception of a few aging prehominids, like Don Cherry, no one cares about the national purity of "our game." It would help if there was a European League of the stature of the NHL, so there could be direct international club competition, as well as existing International competition. Unfortunately the NHL is totally parochial. It pretends the KHL doesn't, exist and is reluctant to release its players even for the Olympics. Until that changes, and there seems little chance of that at the moment, then hockey in North America will remain largely inward looking.

[ursus arctos]

An essential problem in that regard is that the NHL owners believe that they should be the primary financial beneficiaries of any international competition that includes "their" players.

[jameswba]

Thanks Ursos and Amor, that's interesting.

I was reading a blog by a US-based fan of the WC before this one started. His main point was to defend the tournament against all his mates who think it's pointless and that the NHL is all that matters. One thing he admitted was that the IIHF is a 'deeply conservative organisation' - presumably because it ploughs on with organising the WC year after year, at around the same time every year, even though many of the best NHL players will never get to appear in it. Yet the tournament does seem to have adapted, by increasing participation, experimenting with format* and so on. I don't know about conservative, but of the organisations concerned, the NHL definitely seems the more self-interested and inward-looking one.

*I think the format at this championship is just right. They can stop experimenting now.

[Hot Pepsi]

It's not about what "Europe" wants (assuming that Europe is some kind of homogenous entity with only one view on these things for the sake of argument). I get the importance and age of the Stanley Cup, though there is nothing in the rules that suggests that the Stanley Cup has to finish in June. And OK it is not impossible to hold an ice hockey event in summer (my emphasis), but it is bloody stupid. Why not move the Olympic Ice Hockey tournament to the summer games while we're at it?

That would be an ok idea, I think. Better than the last olympic tournament, at least.

By "summer," we're probably talking about September. That's when the Hockey World Cup has been. I don't see what is so bloody stupid about that if it makes for a better event.

I also agree that it would be better if the NHL didn't play into June - for lots of reasons.

But the more I think about it, the more I think it really doesn't matter when they do it. Especially if they insist on doing it every year. They're always going to be a lot of players just too tired or too injured or too tired of missing their family to play in it.

It would be one thing if they could do it like soccer and have the teams playing together a lot over a four year cycle and have a world championship as the culmination of that. But just throwing together whoever shows up and having them play so many games in a week just doesn't seem like much of a true "championship." Maybe it's still worth having. But it just feels underwhelming.

The Hockey World Cup/Canada Cup was, at least, a better attempt to get the best players. Having it outside the NHL season and not having it every year helped. But it was still a bit ad hoc (no offense) and then they really fucked it up last time by taking all the best young players off their country's teams.

And maybe we just don't need international competitions. They seem to bring out a lot of ugly nationalist stuff and not just from Americans.




I won't be sad if the Champions League etc eventually destroys the World Cup in football either. Both are just all about money now, but at least the CL isn't fleecing poor countries. (or not as much, anyway).

[Hot Pepsi]

Thanks Ursos and Amor, that's interesting.

I was reading a blog by a US-based fan of the WC before this one started. His main point was to defend the tournament against all his mates who think it's pointless and that the NHL is all that matters. One thing he admitted was that the IIHF is a 'deeply conservative organisation' - presumably because it ploughs on with organising the WC year after year, at around the same time every year, even though many of the best NHL players will never get to appear in it. Yet the tournament does seem to have adapted, by increasing participation, experimenting with format* and so on. I don't know about conservative, but of the organisations concerned, the NHL definitely seems the more self-interested and inward-looking one.

*I think the format at this championship is just right. They can stop experimenting now.

The tournament won't have prestige among fans unless the best players are in it and the best players won't want to do it unless it has prestige. Baseball has struggled with this conundrum.

As it is, it is remarkable how many top US players are on the US team in the World Championship. Unlike the NHL or the Olympics, none of them grew up watching the World Championship or dreaming of playing in it. It just isn't a "thing" here.

I suspect that both the IIHF and the NHL are equally self-interested. The IIHF wants more viewers for their event and hopes it can drum-up interest in countries where hockey isn't already very popular because that will eventually yield more revenue. The NHL would like to create more hockey fans worldwide, but does not want to shorten its season to accommodate the World Championships because that would be giving up millions upon millions in revenue.

And I don't think the players would go for that either. Why should the NHLPA vote to take money out of all their members pockets just so a select few can play in an international tournament? That's just a non-starter. In fact, the European leagues may start to go longer and add more fixtures that run up against the WC and then even those countries won't send their best players.

[jameswba]

And maybe we just don't need international competitions. They seem to bring out a lot of ugly nationalist stuff and not just from Americans.

The second sentence there was given an illustration last night when Slovak fans whistled the Canadian anthem after their 5-6 loss. It had been an incredible game with a heart-stopping finish, but that reaction was shameful. On the plus side, it's provoked a healthy debate, including among my students at school today, about the importance of respect, treating guests fairly and the rest. Slovakia is not a stranger to ugly nationalism, but at least these days more are ready to make a stand against it when it appears.

I'd also say it was a great atmosphere in Kosice on Saturday with fans of all the Group A nations mixing happily.

[ursus arctos]

Any top flight American or Canadian who has not played in the Worlds in recent years is doing so out of choice.

Having them every year actually improves the chances of such players participating, because the NHL doesn't do dynasties anymore. No one's club is in the last four of the Stanley Cup every year.

[ad hoc]

Hot Pepsi I think the tournament does have prestige. Just not in N America

[ursus arctos]

Correct.

[Amor de Cosmos]

One thing he admitted was that the IIHF is a 'deeply conservative organisation' - presumably because it ploughs on with organising the WC year after year, at around the same time every year, even though many of the best NHL players will never get to appear in it.

I suspect that's largely because the NHL season has lengthened substantially over the past half century.

[Hot Pepsi]

Has it? It's been 82 games and four rounds of 7 games since the 80s, hasn't it?

The World Championships started in the late 70s. Were Canada and the US sending all their best NHL players in the 80s? If so, I don't recall it getting a word of media coverage. Then again, hockey in general didn't get much coverage. But I'm pretty sure the season has lasted into mid to late May since then. Wiki tells me the 85 finals, for example, ended May 30, but I can't find more specific information.

They could also just start the season earlier. Say September 1. Then it would be over earlier.

[Hot Pepsi]

Hot Pepsi I think the tournament does have prestige. Just not in N America

Prestige is always subjective.

[Hot Pepsi]

Any top flight American or Canadian who has not played in the Worlds in recent years is doing so out of choice.

Having them every year actually improves the chances of such players participating, because the NHL doesn't do dynasties anymore. No one's club is in the last four of the Stanley Cup every year.

That's a different way of looking at it. I just meant that, in a given year, a lot of players who would be in the olympics are not on the WC teams.

But, as you say, more guys are getting a chance to do it at least once and it does seem to be growing in stature in the US. Also, the US is just a lot better at hockey than it used to be so there's a feeling like they could possibly win it, which adds more incentive to try.

I don't have cable, but I assume that the NHL Network is showing these games? That can only help. That's certainly done a lot to drive a bit more interest in the World Junior Championships. Previously, Americans could only read about those in The Hockey News.