Quote:
Originally Posted by Roughneck
I mean, maybe? More parity is a natural result of a sport getting more popular, but a country with ten times the population having more people do something doesn’t necessarily equate to a dire situation or a shift in hegemony. Don’t we want the sport to be more popular? Sweden and Finland are always kicking around despite ‘dire’ numbers of players as well.
New Zealand barely cracks the top 10 when it comes to number of rugby players. Same with Ireland. That’s totally expected because they’re small countries. But they’ve done pretty well (the former historically and the latter recently). As the sport grows, its natural Canada would fall behind in the number of players compared to (much) bigger countries.
People have been blowing results at the WJC out of proportion a long time. The late 90s (buoyed by the World Cup and Olympics) we had the death of hockey in Canada as we know it, the hegemony being passed to the US and the Czechs. There are ebbs and flows and ups and downs.Its easy to look at this team and blame coaching and player selection, and also point to the fact that there are three eligible players who are too good to play in the tournament (well, two that are too good and one who is just unavailable). Hockey Canada’s problems don’t necessarily equate to hockey in Canada’s problem.
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Fair points. Personally I’m a big fan of the US National Development Program and would like to see something similar here. I’m not sure if that’s possible given the current structure of minor hockey in Canada without a major restructuring.
Also I’m now drunk on wine and can’t really process my thoughts properly. So that doesn’t help. Lol.