U18 tourney makes rare stop in Canada
Bob Nicholson hopes a rare beston-best men’s tournament and the Wayne Gretzky brand will pull people into Edmonton’s Rogers Place to watch hockey in the middle of summer.
The Hlinka Gretzky Cup, an annual tournament of the world’s top under-18 players, starts Monday in Edmonton and Red Deer, Alta. The rebranded event was formerly named the Ivan Hlinka Memorial Cup in honour of the iconic player and coach from the former Czechoslovakia and was co-hosted by Slovakia and the Czech Republic over the last 21 years.
Canada opens Monday against Switzerland at Rogers Place. The Czechs, Slovaks, Finland, Sweden, Russia and the United States round out the field. The gold-medal game is Aug. 11 in Edmonton.
One of Nicholson’s last acts as president of Hockey Canada before leaving in 2014 was to negotiate a revenue-sharing deal with the Czech and Slovak federations to bring the tournament to Canada in 2018, 2020 and 2022.
“I think it’s a property that will grow once Canadians see what it is,” said Nicholson, now chief executive of the Oilers Entertainment Group.
Hlinka won three world championships and Olympic silver and bronze medals playing for Czechoslovakia.
He also played for the Vancouver Canucks from 1981 to 1983 and coached the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2000-01. Hlinka died in a car crash in 2004 at age 54.
Gretzky, the Oilers’ vice-chairman, agreed to lend his name to this tournament and championship trophy. “You notice the name is Hlinka Gretzky and that’s the way Wayne wanted it, which I think shows the character of Wayne, too,” Nicholson said.
“He knows what his name brings, but he didn’t want to diminish the name Hlinka.”
With the NHL no longer participating in the Winter Olympics, there are few international tournaments where all the world’s top male players of any age compete against each other.
NHL playoffs conflict with the annual men’s world championship, so do the Canadian Hockey League playoffs with the world men’s under-18 championship every spring.
There are always big-name players missing from the mid-winter world under-20 championship because NHL teams tend not to release their teenagers for that tournament.
The Hlinka Gretzky Cup, which has been held under various names dating back to 1991, hasn’t been similarly encumbered in the middle of summer.
Canada previously hosted the tournament in 1996 in B.C. Canadian teams have won gold 21 times.
TSN will broadcast 10 games of the tournament, so it gives Hockey Canada another television property to sell to sponsors.
For the Oilers, it gets people into Rogers Place seats midsummer.
The tournament is also a tie-in with the world under-20 championship starting Dec. 26 in Victoria and Vancouver as some players on Canada’s team in Edmonton could also wear the maple leaf there.
A summit will be held alongside the tournament, bringing arena operators, officials, NHL, international and junior representatives to the city, Nicholson said.