Quote:
Originally Posted by Sidney Crosby's Hat
The pool was more diluted for Gretzky. The league went from 6 teams to 21 in a span of 12 years.
|
It was diluted because there was only one country that played NHL hockey back then (more or less).
In 85/86 the breakdown of players in the NHL was like this
Canada (522 players) who played 76% of the games
USA (101 players) who played 13.9% of the games
Sweden (30 players) who played 3.1% of the games
Finland (15 players) who played 1.8% of the games
Then a smattering of Czech's and Slovaks
Last year, in a 32 team league the numbers were
Canada (445 players ) playing 42.4% of the games
USA (297 players) playing 28.4% of the games
Sweden (107 players) playing 9.9% of the games
Russia (62 players) playing 5.8% of the games
Finland (55 players) playing 5.1% of the games
Czech's are at 3% of the games and then a bunch of other countries. The total number of Canadian players in the NHL is down by 77 players despite there being 253 more jobs than there were in the mid 80's.
The NHL would need about 38 teams just for Canada to have the same number of total players in the league that it did in 1986. And I suspect Canada's percentage will continue to drop as the years go on.