For many of us, the Olympic Games, and in particular, the hockey tournament, have been a welcome distraction. And while many feel the 12 years the NHL has been away from the world stage, these past 10 days are a reminder that the greatest players in the world play in the National Hockey League.
Almost 160 players from the NHL have made this year’s men’s tournament so special. Frankly, the intensity that has been projected in all these games is second to none
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But that doesn’t mean the hockey has been perfect. It’s been good. It’s been dramatic. But it hasn’t been perfect.
On the Olympic stage, not every team was competitive. The host Italians and the French weren’t as good as the Manitoba Moose, or even an ECHL team. But what we witnessed is how the NHL has made the game, on an international level, so much better.
Only one team, the Italians, didn’t have some representation of NHLers or at least former players on their rosters. Slovakia, Denmark, Switzerland and Czechia all had competitive teams because they had players who work and live on this side of the Atlantic and can go home to represent their countries on the ice.
And do they ever represent them. It’s amazing how some become that much better when they wear the nation’s colours, as opposed to those of their NHL teams. They play bigger — and with a swagger that makes their countrymen swell with pride.
This is by far the deepest Olympic tournament since Canada returned to the Games in 1980. And that is even without the Russians able to put a team in the tourney. The fact is that there are more and better players throughout the world, and what we have watched in Milan was the beneficiary. And that is because the NHL, not the IIHF, has been the driving force creating the demand for more players, no matter what country they are from.
In some rather strange way, as many watch and think that the Olympic tournament is the pinnacle of the game, it really is the greatness of the NHL that has made that dream come true.
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