Quote:
Originally Posted by BigTuna
They should not be going. If you read into it, the NHl is making no money from this at all. They are shutting down their league for a month. No other league would do this.
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I think it would be more accurate to say that every other league in the world does this all the time. .
All Euro hockey leagues make room for the world championships every year. While they move less money than the NHL. Finnish, Swedish, Russian and Czech leagues also make room and loan players for the Euro Hockey Tour (which is a set of four tournaments held every year that combine for the unofficial European championship).
Also, there's things like African Cup of Nations, which is held every
two years right in the middle of the Euro soccer season, and the leagues don't go on break for those games. The best African players generally play in Europe, and their European clubs just have to do without them while that tournament is on.
Sure, the teams gripe, and the national coaches of the countries that are almost guaranteed to make the tournament sometimes use a second tier team to beat on the weaker teams. However, just to underline the difference in sports culture, the greatest superstars like Messi are generally always used,
because it would be considered rude not to do that.
(Typically in soccer the qualification games are what makes the money for the national associations, since many countries only rarely or never make it to the tournament. This is also the reason a C-tier tournament like EHT exists in hockey, to make up for the fact that hockey doesn't have a similar qualification system.)
When you compare all this that is considered perfectly normal everywhere else in the world to loaning out your players to the olympics tournament for a couple of weeks every four years (which is already too little, as the tournament would be better if the teams had more time to practice together and the players could rest a bit), it really showcases how completely out of proportion the NHL's whining is.