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        general >> truth >> Hockey
        
(Message started by: username101 on Jun 30^th, 2007, 2:51am)

Title: Hockey
Post by username101 on Jun 30^th, 2007, 2:51am

Did you know that every stanely cup but 6 had canadian captains? ;D

Title: Re: Hockey
Post by ima1trkpny on Jun 30^th, 2007, 3:10pm

That is interesting but it makes sense considering the Canadians sure can play hockey...

Title: Re: Hockey
Post by denis on Jul 3^rd, 2007, 10:48pm

Also, there were almost exclusively Canadian captains in the NHL up until about 20 years ago when Europeans started to come over.

I would have liked this last Stanley cup final to go to seven games though. Five games was kind of anti-climatic (yes, I was rooting for home town Ottawa). But Anaheim was clearly the better team.

Title: Re: Hockey
Post by ima1trkpny on Jul 6^th, 2007, 11:01pm

on 07/03/07 at 22:48:49, denis wrote:

I would have liked this last Stanley cup final to go to seven games though. Five games was kind of anti-climatic (yes, I was rooting for home town Ottawa). But Anaheim was clearly the better team.

California uber alles! :P

Title: Re: Hockey
Post by tiber13 on Jul 7^th, 2007, 3:20pm

do you think toronto will win the cup within 50 years?
Not unless they get off their buts and spend more money on good players
And yes, most canadians can play Good Hockey.

Title: Re: Hockey
Post by SWF on Jul 7^th, 2007, 9:48pm

Only one time has the Stanley Cup winning captain been non-Canadien. There were a few times when the winning team did not have a captain, and maybe that makes 6 times when there was not a Canadien captain, as the exact wording of the statement in the orginal post.

Canada is good at being captains in the NHL, but there are other hockey leagues in the world, and Canada has won only one gold medal in olympic (men's) hockey since 1952.

Title: Re: Hockey
Post by denis on Jul 8^th, 2007, 12:06am

on 07/07/07 at 21:48:19, SWF wrote:

but there are other hockey leagues in the world, and Canada has won only one gold medal in olympic (men's) hockey since 1952.

True, but professionals were not participating in the Olympics until the late 80's. In hockey, I believe it was 1994 when professionals where introduced. So until that time, Olympics were not really a good barometer for hockey domination.

A tournament that pittted the best players (including professionals) from hockey powerhouse nations starting in 1976 was the Canada Cup Series (76, 81, 84, 87, 91) which later became the World Cup (96 and 2004). I would look at these results as a better indication in addition to post 1992 Olympics when Olympics started allowing professionals in hockey. In Canada-Cup/World Cup, Canada won 5 times, USA once and USSR once.

Also, Canada-Cup/World Cup finals use a best-of- three format which is different from sudden death format in the Olympics where the one game final decides all. Thus in the Olympics, with the one game final, luck will play a bigger role.

Canada and USSR where definitely dominating the sport from the early 70's to the early 90's if we take these tournaments into account. Before that, no international tournament existed to test profesionnals between different nations

Then USA, Sweden, Czekoslovakia each had their moment in the spotlight by winning the Canada Cup/World Cup and post 1992 Olympics as the different hockey nations seems to have achieved more parity since the 90's.

Since 1994, its much more difficult to predict who will win the Olympics in hockey unlike those days when USSR used to win like clockwork (with the exception of course for those 1960 and 1980 Miracle years for team USA).

Title: Re: Hockey
Post by tiber13 on Jul 8^th, 2007, 7:25am

Canada is actually magnificent, if you look at the population, population wise. Around 2000(year)
USSR(Russia) pop. 230,000,000(150,000,000)
USA pop. 275,000,000
Canada pop. 33,000,000
Check. Republic, pop. 11,000,000
Norway pop, 11,000,000
Sweden pop. 8,000,000
Finland pop, 6,000,000
All the populations are estimates, and i will revise soon.

Anyways, Compared to almighty Soviet Hockey Russia, Canada should only win 1 in 5 games,
and to usa, 1 in 9 games
altogether, compared to the average of 92 mill., Canada should only win 1in3 of their games, but they are [better, not] tied to Russia, and clearly better than the almighty USA

( there i go again, explaining skill in Math)
Tiber13 is not responsible for any harm done to these countries, their hockey teams had it coming)

Title: Re: Hockey
Post by SWF on Jul 8^th, 2007, 10:38am

I was not questioning Canada's strength in hockey, but implying out that the original post seemed to be short changing Canada, being that every Stanley Cup champion captain but 1 was from Canada. Since misleading facts short changing Canada was the topic, I threw out the Olympic thing.

Estimating a country's strength in hockey by population makes little sense. By that reasonsing China and India should be ice hockey powerhouses. United States is pretty apathetic about hockey. Even here in Los Angeles area where the Stanley Cup was won this year, nobody seemed to notice. This year a Spanish languange TV broadcast of a soccer game had higher TV ratings than the Stanley Cup finals. This year the NBC network left a semi-final game they were showing that had gone into overtime in favor of showing a pre-race show about a horse race. Look at TV ratings for hockey in Canada and the US- Canada draws several times more people despite their much smaller population.

Title: Re: Hockey
Post by denis on Jul 8^th, 2007, 1:07pm

on 07/08/07 at 10:38:55, SWF wrote:

This year the NBC network left a semi-final game they were showing that had gone into overtime in favor of showing a pre-race show about a horse race. Look at TV ratings for hockey in Canada and the US- Canada draws several times more people despite their much smaller population.

Yes that NBC debacle frustrated me to no end.

NHL President Bettman gives a free handout to NBC (they did not have to pay for the US broadcast rights for the NHL games) and it was appalling that NBC went to the pre-horse race game when the Ottawa/Buffalo East Conference final game went into overtime.

CBC (the Canadian broadcast rights holder to NHL games) pays a multi-million sum per year for the rights to broadcast the games, and still NBC was able to dictate the schedule by forcing saturday afternoon games right up to the semi finals. CBC fought to have the playoff games aired on saturday night instead when the ratings in Canada are even higher but to no avail.

Title: Re: Hockey
Post by denis on Jul 8^th, 2007, 5:49pm

on 07/07/07 at 15:20:13, tiber13 wrote:

do you think toronto will win the cup within 50 years?

With parity in the league what with the salary caps, they may very well win once or twice in 50 years. But the days of dynasties where a team wins 5 cups in a row are over.

Title: Re: Hockey
Post by SWF on Jul 8^th, 2007, 9:32pm

NBC probably thought of showing NHL games as free programming, and NHL did not charge NBC since it is free advertising. As a percentage Americans are not very enthusiastic about hockey to get good TV ratings, but there seem to be enough fans to sell tickets. HDTV might help improve popularity of it on TV, because many people complain about not being able to see, and the widescreen helps see where everyone is.

Back to the Canada Cup winners being a good indicator of hockey talent in a country: doesn't the Canada Cup gets its name from most of the games being played in Canada? If so, that does not seem like a fair contest when one the same country always gets home ice advantage. With the World Cup, I think the prelim rounds are not all in Canada but the finals are in North America.

Don't the players often prefer not to play on Canadian teams because for financial reasons? If that is true, Toronto might have to continue waiting for their next Cup.

Title: Re: Hockey
Post by denis on Jul 8^th, 2007, 10:26pm

Yes, the NHL/NBC agreement was for the benefit of marketing the game in the US. This has been the "liet motif" of Bettman's tenure: to grow the game in the US. Its a worthy goal but with mixed results as we can see. I agree that having the games broadcast in HDTV which will help. I never really watched regular season games (mostly playoffs) until they started to broadcast in HDTV. The picture quality is so good It's like getting free tickets to a game

One thing is for certain, it doesn't help to promote the game by putting playoff games on Saturday afternoon (when all of North America is out doing their barbeques and summer sports at the cottage).

And Canadians are so used to watching their hockey games on Saturday Night. To whit, the world's longest running sports program according to Wikepedia is CBC's "Hockey Night in Canada" which started in the early 50's and is still going strong. It runs on Saturday nights and after 50 years, we have become addicted to our hockey fix on Saturday night. Saturday afternoon is just too weird a time for a hockey game after 50 years of watching it at night.

Re: Canada Cup

From what I can recall, Canada did not get home ice advantage ice (i.e. last line change at faceoffs) at all Canada Cup tournament games although all the games were played in Canada under NHL rules. But home crowd advantage could help them a bit.

In the round robin, they alternated home ice advantage between all the teams and I believe that the team that got the higher standing in the round- robin got home ice advantage for the elimination round.

You are right. In the Canadians teams, hockey players are playing in a "fishbowl" atmosphere what with the media attention and fan expectation, Montreal being a prime example of pressure cooker atmosphere. Pat Burns (a one time coach in Montreal) mentioned one of the main reasons for leaving Montreal was the constant media attention. Some players thrive in this atmosphere, others prefer less attention and just go about their business of playing the game.

Playing for a non-traditional market hockey team in the US (read: where interest is low), hockey players have a better chance of having a "normal" off-ice life and being relatively anonymous but with the same financial benefits. Note that all player salaries payed by Canadian teams are also in US dollars.

I think the main reason Toronto did not win a cup in such a long time is because of questionable management decisons, especially regarding draft choices and trading. And it so happens that they don't get punished by their fans, who keep selling out the arena day-in day-out despite Toronto putting out a mediocre team. I think its only a matter of time (not sure how long) when they will win another Cup but I doubt it will be within the next 5 years. I actually have a tape (in black and white) of the last playoff game when Toronto beat Montreal to win the Cup in 1967 (the last time they won it).

Title: Re: Hockey
Post by lopez on Jul 13^th, 2012, 5:04am

The European Hockey Federation today announced that Angus Kirkland has been appointed as Director General.