Go Miscellany Go!

Hockey's intermittent World Cup is back on again, in the fall of 2016. The big talking point has been the two oddball teams that will be joining the sport's traditional national powers: a team of under-23 North Americans, and an all-star team of Europeans from countries that don’t get their own team.

I'm quite surprised to see this development. A few months ago the news leaked out that these teams were being considered, and the reaction from the fans was profoundly negative. Obviously, you have to take negative hockey fan reaction with a grain of salt, since they hate everything new. They were similarly angry when the tournament was renamed from "Canada Cup" 18 years ago. However, this seemed to be more than the usual traditionalist grumbling.

I have to agree that under-23 team does seem like a bad idea. It waters down the nationalism that fuels international sports. Who's going to cheer on the youth team? It probably won't be young people, since child sports fans like to live vicariously through their heroes.

The All-Star Euro team didn't seem like such a bad idea though. I think the anger at it came mainly from being tied to the young team idea. There are lots of professional players who come from non-traditional hockey countries, like Anze Kopitar (Slovenia) or Thomas Vanek (Austria.) Why not throw them together to make the ultimate underdog team? Perhaps it would help to have a Disney tie-in movie about them.

I would make a couple of changes though:

• Declare Slovakia to be close enough to a hockey power to get their own team, especially after schooling Sweden in the world juniors.
• Find some token players from Japan or Kazakhstan or something and call it the world team. No, I don't think that would get us big viewership in the huge markets of China and India, but a Rest-Of-The-World team just sounds more interesting and marketable than Rest-Of-Europe

So that's my prescription: seven traditional teams, one so-called gimmick team, that probably won't win anyway, and bury the Young Guns idea. If they insist on having the under-23 team, they might as well go whole-hog and make all the teams based on a theme instead of a country. Other teams could be:

• All small, fast players
• All Russian skill players
• Nothing but enforcers
• Every current player that the Leafs have traded away
• Retired Hall Of Fame players
• An all-Sergei team