If Canadians were really serious about pro hockey

[Die Neue Zeit]

This idea popped up in my head as I watched Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals.

If Canadians were really serious about pro hockey championships ("Bring Lord Stanley home!"), why is there no emulation of Soviet hockey amongst the Canadian Armed Forces and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police? Why are there no hockey programs there to develop all-Canadian pro hockey teams in the CAF and RCMP to enter and compete in the NHL (with appropriate government regulatory pressure on the NYC-based league)?

[Metacomet]

Probably because they, and everyone else knows that with the current system they still produce the best players. And the most "good players". I live in what is considered a youth/developmental hockey area,(Boston) and it's probably nothing compared to an equivalent sized city in Canada. And we have a LOT of youth and high school hockey, (as in, high schools students go to specifically to develop hockey ability) not to mention college

It is given enough attention, some say to the detriment of other sports in the country. It's fine IMO.

Of course there are morons I know who seems to think everyone who plays for a pro sports team is from the city they play in :rolleyes: So they think the NHL is full of people from Florida and California, and not from Quebec, B.C, and Ontario

[khad]

With the exception of habs homers, most Canadian fans hate Vancouver. That "Canada's team" crap was just something cooked up by the media.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Probably because they, and everyone else knows that with the current system they still produce the best players. And the most "good players".

So far Canada has also produced the most expensive and media-intimidated players after today's Russians, not playing in Canadian-based teams:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HC_CSKA_Moscow#A_Russian_hockey_powerhouse


CSKA won 32 Soviet regular season championships during the Soviet League's 46-year existence, including all but six from 1955 to 1989 and 13 in a row from 1977 to 1989.

CSKA was almost as dominant in the European Cup. They won all but two titles from 1969 to 1990, including 13 in a row from 1978 to 1990. The team's first coach was Anatoli Tarasov, who would later become famous as the coach of the Soviet national team. Tarasov coached the Red Army Team, either alone or with co-coaches, for most of the time from 1946 to 1975. The team's greatest run came under Viktor Tikhonov, who was coach from 1977 to 1996--serving for most of that time as coach of the national team.

The Red Army Team was able to pull off such a long run of dominance because during the Soviet era, the entire CSKA organization was a functioning division of the Red Army. Taking full advantage of the fact that all able-bodied Soviet males had to serve in the military, it was literally able to draft the best young hockey players in the Soviet Union onto the team. There was a substantial overlap between the rosters of the Red Army Team and the Soviet national team, which was one factor behind the Soviets' near-absolute dominance of international hockey from the 1950s through the early 1990s. By the late 1980s, however, the long run of Red Army dominance caused a significant dropoff in attendance throughout the league.[1] Not surprisingly, discipline was quite strict, especially under Tikhonov. His players practiced for as many as 11 months a year, and were confined to training camp most of that time even if they were married. However, he mellowed somewhat after the collapse of the Soviet Union.