Latgale_fan
Registered User
Thw problem with Czechs is the fact that it is as populous country as Sweden but lot less powerful economically... If Czechs had money, they'd have great hockey in their league. Pure and simple. The same about their youth hockey. I don't think we need to search for some other explanations.
Why would something like that happen in Sweden in 30-50 years? In 30-50 years Sweden will still have big companies and wealthy people to pay for hockey tickets... Russia had the same problem in 90s because the economy after the collapse of the USSR was in terrible shape but to the fact that country is much bigger than Czech Republic and has a lot of natural resources we now have KHL. And that's all. You can't just simply decide "I won't be a feeder to NHL!", you have to offer better or similar conditions and pay... and you can't do that if your economy cannot cope with a top class hockey league. Why Latvia doesn't have a league like Belarus, even though we constantly beat them in juniors? Because Latvia is like 2 million people, Belarus is 10 million + clubs backed by the government and big companies...
To sum up- in market economy you can't avoid being a feeder to NHL (or, like Dinamo Rīga, produce new hockey millionaires for top KHL clubs like Lokomotiv 4th line Miķelis Rēdlihs). You can only avoid that overpaying players which is done by KHL top (and not so top) clubs. Radulov is in KHL partially maybe he likes it in his home country but probably also because after taxes he's the highest paid player in the world at the moment. Every AHL player in KHLs upper half clubs is overpaid beyond belief (like 5-6 times the previous salary). Lokomotiv pays Miķelis more that Ozo or Hossa ever got in Dinamo Rīga, and the last two were the top stars of the club.
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