From THN's Archive: World Cup vs. Olympics

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  World Cup vs. Olympics - Sep. 1, 2016 - Ken Campbell & Ryan Kennedy

Put the World Cup of Hockey up against the Winter Olympics and there’s no contest which tournament holds the moral high ground. One is a soulless, money-hungry sideshow, and the other is the World Cup.

Yeah, I said it. The Olympics isn’t a happy collection of global amateurism and goodwill. It’s a corporate, city-devouring greed machine run by a crowd only Sepp Blatter could love. As magical as the Salt Lake City Games were for Canada in 2002, type “Olympic corruption” into your favorite search engine and see what articles pop up first. Hockey already has a past with hucksters such as Alan Eagleson and Bruce McNall, so there’s no need sullying the game any longer.

I know folks have gripes with Gary Bettman, but he has grown hockey in numerous and measurable ways, while the head of the NHL Players’ Association, Donald Fehr, has taken a union in disarray and put it on square footing, simultaneously fostering a working and largely amicable relationship with Bettman and crew. That’s who is in charge of the World Cup.

And the showdown in Toronto had everything you want in a tournament.

To begin with, it was a super-sized beston-best, since the top six countries were be joined by Team North America and Team Europe to spice things up. So instead of watching non-NHLers from Japan or Italy in Olympic play, we got Connor McDavid, Johnny Gaudreau and Nathan MacKinnon, or Zdeno Chara running a power play alongside Roman Josi with Mats Zuccarello waiting to pounce from the slot.

The NHL is the best league on the planet, and only the World Cup format ensures the highest percentage of elite players going head-to-head. Was it a little weird having Slovakians, Danes and Swiss on the same squad? Sure, but Slovenia’s Anze Kopitar was also pumped. “Once you step on the ice, we’re all professionals and we all want to win,” he said. “It doesn’t matter who you’re playing with or who you’re playing against.”

For those who play for traditional hockey powers, such as Canada, Russia and the U.S., the World Cup is far from a consolation prize. It’s another chance to put on a beloved national jersey and go to war on the ice. “I hope we get as many opportunities as we can to represent our country,” said American Ryan McDonagh of the New York Rangers. “You only get to play this game for so long. To have that competitive spirit against other countries, that’s stuff you dream of as a kid.”

And it’s not like generations have grown up dreaming of Olympic gold. The tournament has only included NHLers since 1998. The World Cup started in 1996 while its forbearer, the Canada Cup, goes back to 1976.

But the best thing about the World Cup? It doesn’t throw a ratchet into the NHL season. While the Olympics drag our best players halfway around the world for a couple weeks in the middle of the NHL campaign (you don’t see the NBA dealing with such shenanigans), the World Cup will gives us awesome hockey in September, when nothing else is going on.

From a spectator’s point of view, this is excellent. Even for the players this is an upgrade. Injuries are going to happen no matter when a tournament is on, so that’s not a consideration. But getting to train and then play with the best talents in the world on the cusp of the regular season means NHLers can hit the ground running. There’s even the potential for limiting injuries, as players will be 100-percent prepared for the World Cup, so conditioning ailments are less likely than usual, when players ease their way into training camp.

For hockey players, the hard road is the best path to glory. And at the World Cup, there are no easy outs.

In any sport these days, it’s all about the eyeballs. Whether you’re talking about high definition TV, Amazon Fire TV, Fire TV stick, Apple TV or any of the other multiple variations on the boob tube, nothing makes a statement like having people’s retinas glued to your product.

And there is nothing that achieves that more effectively than having the best players in the world playing against one another in the Olympics. It is indisputable, in fact, that the five-ring circus has drawn the largest audiences in the history of the sport in Canada and the U.S. The Canada/World Cup, World Championship, Stanley Cup final and World Junior Championship pale so much in comparison that none of them even registers.

So why are NHL owners so dead-set opposed to their players participating in the biggest showcase in the world? Well, it has something to do with the risk their players run of being injured playing for free while the owners are still stroking the cheques (see Tavares, John). Much of it has to do with the fact the NHL has little control over the proceedings and gets none of the profits, but that’s the price you pay for putting your athletes on the biggest stage where the spotlight shines the brightest.

For example, do you have any idea what hockey game has attracted the most American viewers ever? Well, it’s the final at the 1980 Olympics, which featured the plucky American college kids beating Finland for gold on the heels of knocking off the Soviets – one of the greatest teams the game has ever known. The game averaged 32.8 million viewers, nearly double the number for the 2010 gold medal game between Canada and the U.S. in Vancouver 30 years later. In Canada, the final at the 2010 Olympics attracted an average of 16.6 million viewers, which accounted for almost half the country. The game topped out at 26.5 million, which represents roughly 80 percent of Canada.

Four years later, the T.J. Oshie shootout game against Russia attracted 4.1 million viewers on NBCSN, which set a record for a live stream of a hockey game, until a couple days later when 4.6 million watched the U.S.’s semifinal loss to Canada. More importantly, there were more than 2.1 million unique users on “TV Everywhere,” an on-demand live streaming service. That total represented the highest number ever to that point, including the Super Bowl.

When Oshie thrilled the hockey world by scoring four goals on six shootout attempts against Russia in Sochi, he got a shoutout from President Barack Obama and gained 129,000 Twitter followers overnight. He was the toast of the games, and his performance was singled out as one of the most memorable hockey moments in his country’s history. None of that happens if not for the Olympics.

The NHL has always trumpeted its claim that hockey fans are among the most tech savvy, best educated and most financially well off of any who follow the four major sports in North America. When you have that many people wanting your product on that many platforms, it makes sense to keep putting them on the world’s biggest stage, no?

But that’s not the only reason why the Olympics are the best hockey tournament. From the Miracle on Ice to the Peter Forsberg stamp goal to the 2010 gold medal game that is regarded as one of the best ever played, the Olympics have the ability to supply moments of drama more compelling than any other.

If not for the Olympics, the NHL would be devoid of European talent. That might please the xenophobes among us, but it would have also robbed the NHL of some of the most skilled players ever. If not for the Olympics, there would have been little motivation for the Russians to use hockey and Olympic glory as a testament to their supremacy. And there would have been little motivation for countries such as Sweden, Finland and the Czech Republic to follow suit.

The Olympics remains the only unsullied best-on-best hockey tournament in the world. It gives us moments like the ones provided by Anze Kopitar and Slovenia, one where every country is put on equal footing instead of being marginalized into a hodgepodge of players who have no common purpose, as with two of the teams in the World Cup of Hockey. It provides the world with a glimpse of the greatest game on the planet. And it needs to stay.