Quote:
Originally Posted by polak
Welcome to what every non-North American major sport fan has to deal with all the time?
The difference is the following the tournament has. The prestige. What's the point of winning a world cup if the world doesn't actually give a ####? It's going to be awesome when Canada beats the US or Sweden and you talk to an American or a Swede about your country's epic win in the World Cup and they won't even know what you're talking about.
If you keep this tournament NHL centric, and don't include proper countries and let them develop (ala Switzerland), and if you never host the tournament outside of North America, it will never grow into a tournament that matters like the Olympic tournament does.
So to your point, if this ever has the chance to become a legitimate world cup that is a big deal in places like Russia or Czechia, you're going to have to get up at stupid times to watch it anyways. Hell Japan and Korea are both in the division right under the big guys in the IIHF rankings. Maybe they'll host it one day.
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What's the point of doing anything if the rest of the world doesn't care?
It seems the biggest problem people have with this event is the name. "World Cup". Call it the Canada Cup and move on. But if the IOC isn't going to pay to insure NHL players, I don't see how this is the NHL's fault. Team Canada took $150 million worth of players to Sochi.
Is the NHL really supposed to eat the cost of insuring eight teams, getting no revenue, and shuttering their league for three weeks in the interest of 'exposure'? They're a multi-billion dollar industry, not a freelance writer.