We are all Stephen Stamkos. Well, no, we’re not exactly Stephen Stamkas. His international hockey path is more sympathetic than ours.
We at least enjoyed the best men’s hockey at the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and 2014 in Sochi. Stamkas did not make the Canadian roster in 2010 because he was an NHL sophomore, just in a disappointing year for freshmen. In 2013-14, he was one of the elite players in the world, scoring 14 goals in 17 games, but terribly broke his leg and missed in Sochi.
Until 2018? No participation in the NHL Olympics. Finally, before the 2022 Games, which were to return to the NHL, Stamkas was the healthiest of all years and played high-end hockey. Finally he was going to realize his Olympic dream.
And … thank you very much, COVID-19. The NHL rightly withdrew because of the pandemic. Stamkos was robbed again.
So were we, as fans of the game. Conor McDavid, Nathan McKinnon and Sidney Crosby are not on the same team. No connection Ostan Matthews / Patrick Kane. No super line Laine-Barkow-Rontanen. Take any amazing best scenarios you’ve come up with over the last eight years and burn them. How utterly devastating.
Well, that was for most of us. The NHL and its owners do not receive revenue from the Olympics, suspend their season for six months and send their assets abroad to risk injury. For them, it was good news when the NHL Players Association, to which Commissioner Gary Batman gave the “last word” to the ingenious gaslightman, withdrew from the 2022 Beijing Games. In the NHL brass was probably made by carts.
Not only do they no longer have to worry about what they find annoying concessions to players, but even now fans ’stomachs have to whet their appetites for something that really makes NHL money: the World Cup. The last time we saw him was in 2016, and obviously he’s back in the game for hockey fans who consider him the best man.
The NHL and NHLPA are expected to meet on possible plans for the 2022 World Cup. It remains to be seen how soon the event can be planned. Certainly not this summer. Perhaps 2024 makes sense, two years from the Olympic tournament on both sides.
But what would the format look like? The 2016 World Cup was remembered not so much for its results – Canada was mostly sleepwalking for the title – but for its format.
The European sacrificial team reached the final, and the North American team, the under-23 team with McDavid, Matthews and McKinnon, was a history of the tournament that was interesting to watch.
The detractors felt that the team’s tricks sucked out of the “best and best” tournament, given that some North American players would get into their national teams. And, as McDavid told reporters in December after withdrawing from the Olympics, “We need to find a way to hold the best tournament here at some point.” So, what changes in the format of the World Cup will quench the thirst of the best, while maintaining a certain creative potential? Consider these suggestions.
1. Forget about the under-23 team. Make North America a team under 20. The chances of world junior players entering Canada or the US anyway would be slim, so you don’t steal a lot of entrants from national teams. Instead, you’ll get essentially a mixed WJC team, which could still cause the fuzzy excitement of the 2016 North American team. Think Conor Bedard, Shane Wright and Logan Cooley on the same team.
2. No more European teams. The 2016 World Cup allowed only six real countries, and the trick teams increased the field to eight. This time eight countries are playing. If the current IIHF rating was used in the tournament, Canada, Finland, Russia, the USA, Germany, the Czech Republic, Sweden and Switzerland would compete. Then I would stretch the field to 10 for two circus teams. One of them is a hybrid team of the junior world. Second…
3. Add a male senior team. Yeah. I think with someone who doesn’t currently have a contract in the NHL. And they can come from any country in the world. Maybe we will have a gray team, which will include Eric Staal, Jaromir Jagr, Vadim Shipachev and Nikita Gusev, and the head will be Vasily Kashechkin. Oh, are you worried they’ll beat? At the Beijing Games in 2022, McDavid and Matthews were teamed up with China. Sit down. In a short tournament, will the international senior team be worse than Slovakia or Denmark?
Such ideas might seem far-fetched, but theoretically it was with the North American and European team. With these settings, we would not lose the stupid unpredictability of 2016, but we will get the feeling that we are watching a real best tournament. Who’s with me?
Creating the highest – and funniest – hockey world cup
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