Greed can be good
But fabulous World Cup play sets up a drop into the regular-season blues
In his piece from the closing ceremony a month ago, Postmedia’s Matthew Fisher wrote that the Rio de Janeiro Olympics were a success because they weren’t a failure. Great line.
For all the things the moneystrapped Rio 2016 organizing committee did wrong, the most picturesque backdrop in the world couldn’t fail to show up brilliantly on TV — and the Games prevailed over all its problems, real and perceived, because any time you throw the greatest athletes on the planet into one big tent, magic invariably will ensue.
And so it will be, and already has been, for the World Cup of Hockey, an idea undeniably born of greed but which may well morph into something lasting and valuable.
It needs to be great, to survive the second-guessing which always accompanies a concept as outside-the-box as this re-imagined best-on-best brainchild of the National Hockey League and the NHL Players’ Association.
The hockey needs to be played at such a high level that the advance criticisms — wrong time of year, cash grab, predictable home-ice advantage, a continental team of certain-to-be-overmatched young stars, an anthemless olio of odds and ends from Europe’s also-ran nations — turns out to be irrelevant, or just plain wrong.
So far, so good. In fact, so far, fabulous.
Ralph Krueger’s “us against the superpowers” message to his Team Europe hodgepodge has hit home and the result was wondrous to behold in Saturday’s 3-0 victory over the shellshocked Yanks. And the speed and unbridled élan of the kids on Team North America, who picked apart a seasoned, accomplished Finnish team 4-1 on Sunday, has been the most heartening development in the tournament.
Todd McLellan and his Team NA staff won’t want this to get around, but the fact that coaches haven’t had time to press these talented under-24s irrevocably into their NHL straitjackets yet has produced a brand of hockey so refreshing, even the league couldn’t have imagined it in the planning stages.
The idea, surely, was to showcase the emerging future stars of the NHL, many of whom might not have made their countries’ national teams ( because coaches will always err on the side of experience and reliability) but who needed to be marketed because the game is going young, and quickly.
Instead, the kids seem to be on a mission to show the grown-ups that structure isn’t everything and this game, played on narrow blades at blinding speed with the wind in your face, also can be a hell of a lot of fun.
Team Canada, with superior talent all committed to Mike Babcock’s 200-foot game, is also awesome to behold in its way, but you wouldn’t call playing for Babcock “fun.”
Does the World Cup concept have its flaws? Sure, it does, but mostly from what it purports to be, i.e. an instrument for growing the game globally.
If that were truly the goal, the Olympics — which the NHL appears bent on keeping its players out of, in future — is the far better vehicle. How does cutting half the field of national teams from 12 to six grow the game around the world?
It’s about control of the revenues, and the NHL doesn’t get that from an Olympics.
Is it stacked in favour of Canada, on home ice, and small ice? Yup. Canada won four of five Canada Cups, all at home, and the 2004 World Cup final, played in Toronto. The only time any part of the final was played outside Canada, 1996, the Americans won (though they lost Game 1 in Philly and both their victories in the three-game final came in Montreal.)
Would holding it at mid-season, like the Olympics, produce a more polished brand of hockey? Sorry, that one doesn’t hold water. From the 1972 Summit Series through all those Canada Cups and two previous World Cups, they’ve always been September events, and almost always terrific.
(The 2004 tournament, played knowing the lockout was about to come down the day after it ended, might have been the depressing exception.)
No, the only argument against a fall extravaganza is that it makes the first few months of what comes next look so feeble.
Whatever marketing upside may accrue for the game as a whole, after a best-on-best event, dissipates quickly when each NHL team gets its two or three or four players back from the elevated passion of September and the hard reality of regular season, in all its watered-down ordinariness, settles in for the revenue-generating months of toil that lie ahead.
It takes a lot of “love my team” blind devotion — wherein the result is all — not to notice the difference.
The hockey needs to be played at such a high level that the advance criticisms … turn out to be irrelevant, or just plain wrong.