Remember the brave days, several decades ago, when ice hockey was projected to be the #2 world sport behind only soccer? When last we looked, since the 1972 Canada-USSR titanic showdown, 42 years ago, that confident prediction has gone into the ashcan.
Back then there were the two superpowers, Canada and the USSR, and four great powers: the USA, Finland, Sweden, and Czechoslovakia (soon to become the Czech Republic and Slovakia).
42 years later there are still the same seven hockey powers, only now there are no superpowers and any of the seven could win the Olympic gold medal or a world championship.
In 42 years, only Switzerland has seen the quality of its hockey improve to be able to compete with the original seven. That’s not much progress.
There’s no better measurement of the stagnation than on the NHL’s own website where everything can be translated into English and French for North America and Russian, Slovakian, Swedish, Czech, and Finnish, plus German, for Europe. No new languages need be added.
In international hockey tournaments, everything is divided into levels, the A and B group, like European professional soccer.
In the first round there is no suspense about who is going to move on to the next round; it is always the big eight (plus two token countries if there are 10 teams in the next round).
There are the usual, dreary, boring 10-1, 8-0, 12-2 scores and then the losers play to see who is going be regulated down to the B level. Occasionally there is the rare upset.
Surprisingly in contrast, the quality of international curling has expanded to where even the Chinese and Koreans can compete effectively with perennial contender Canada. There is a lesson to be learned somewhere.
The truth is that the “big seven” have done a poor job of expanding the quality of the game internationally. When only one country can honestly say that the quality of its hockey has improved in 42 years, that is not saying much.
There is an abundance of countries which could be improved at the B level without even trying to introduce hockey into new markets. Norway, Austria, France, Italy, Latvia, Denmark, Kazakhstan, Germany, Poland, and Belarus could be improved.
There are enough countries to double the “big eight” into a “big 16″; even a “big 12″ would be a substantial improvement.
Just as bad is that there is no international championship comparable to soccer’s World Cup.
In 1976, back in those brave days of confident international hockey expansion, Canada instituted the Canada Cup (to be transformed into the World Cup) to be played every four years with the same importance attached to it as soccer’s World Cup.
Alas, that tournament has been allowed to lapse and only the Olympic Games provide any true test of international hockey supremacy, and this depends on the doubtful participation of the NHL.
The current World Championships are made up of teams of players whose NHL club failed to make the playoffs and players who have yet to try for the NHL, not necessarily the best teams that countries can send.
International hockey comes second, the NHL comes first. There is more real competition at the international junior teenage level than at the pros.
After the Canada-USSR series in 1972, it seemed that the possibilities for developing hockey internationally in at least half the world seemed limitless.
42 years later, hockey can only say that it really improved in Switzerland.
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