Cheli
Registered User
An article in the Toronto Star today...
http://www.thestar.com/sports/hocke...ada-s-home-ice-edge-slowly-killing-tournament
I agree that he has some valid points about how Canada kind of hogs the tournament. But at the same time, from the sounds of the Euro posters here (and he admits it himself), the WJCs are not a big deal outside of Canada. There isn't much point throwing it in the middle of nowhere in the hopes of promoting interest and having nobody show up. It'd be interesting to see it on the larger ice more often though.
Still, I'm not sure how much more interest can be drawn for this tournament internationally. I'm interested to hear from the overseas people (as well as North Americans) about this.
http://www.thestar.com/sports/hocke...ada-s-home-ice-edge-slowly-killing-tournament
It's the perfect sports property, really. Canada either wins, or a group of plucky and hard-working Canadian lads are unabashedly portrayed as skating their gosh-golly hearts out for their country but just falling short.
An easy sell either way.
This year marks the first time the world juniors have been played in Canada two straight years. Next year's competition will be in Buffalo, which will likely attract Canadian fans in overwhelming numbers, as did the 2005 event in Grand Forks, N.D., and then it's back to Alberta for the 2012 tournament.
If you're starting to notice a pattern here, you should. The last time the world junior tourney was held in Europe was 2008, and it won't be until 2013 that the event goes overseas again. By then, it will have been in North America – which really means the Canadian market – for six of the previous eight years.
This is not good, at least not for the event.
While it calls itself the world junior championship, it's slowly morphing into the Junior Canada Cup, an event generally held in Canada and often won by Canada.
If the aim of the world juniors is to be considered a truly global competition, holding the event in one country, and thus giving that country home-ice advantage most of the time, undermines that goal.
I agree that he has some valid points about how Canada kind of hogs the tournament. But at the same time, from the sounds of the Euro posters here (and he admits it himself), the WJCs are not a big deal outside of Canada. There isn't much point throwing it in the middle of nowhere in the hopes of promoting interest and having nobody show up. It'd be interesting to see it on the larger ice more often though.
Still, I'm not sure how much more interest can be drawn for this tournament internationally. I'm interested to hear from the overseas people (as well as North Americans) about this.