Women’s Ice hockey! In the World Hockey Summit!
August 26, 2010The 2010 world hockey summit has been going on in Toronto…wait what?
What is the world hockey summit? Well let’s start from the beginning. If you are following the same dudes I am on twitter, you are undoubtedly having your feed being blown up near constantly by the big guns. Guys at Puck Daddy, The Hockey News, Hockey Night in Canada…they’re all there, and they’re all tweeting about it! So many are tweeting about it, in fact, it’s starting to make my brain hurt a little bit.
So what is the hockey Summit?
It’s kinda like Comic Con…but better…because every who’s who of hockey is there, doing panels, giving opinions, and possibly making a difference in the game. Going onto the website is nothing short of overwhelming, and I suggest if you have the mind to check it out, free up your calendar because there’s a lot to go through.
Something really close to my heart is going under the knife on the last day of the Summit. Women’s hockey. Now if you didn’t watch women’s hockey during the Olympics, you’re a fool. FOOL. And not even the kind of respectable fool in Hamlet. You’re not a foil of any intelligence…FOOL.
And that is directed at everyone who teased me during my intense screaming matches with my TV during USA/Canada, USA/China…USA/The Universe. Girls hockey is awesome. It’s the speed of your little zippy forwards, the finesse of your well honed Canadian and Russian poster boys (no names) and the overwhelming scoring that makes games versus salary strapped teams so much fun.
That scoring deficit may just be the downfall of Women’s hockey in the Olympics. When you look at the difference in scoring between Canada and the US, in comparison to eastern teams in Finland, Sweden, China and so forth, you see that there’s a bit of an embarrassingly large deficit. Let’s be honest…the riff is about as big as the one between California and China (…the pacific ocean, if you didn’t catch that.) There’s almost no competition.
And that’s not me being cocky about my home continent…IOC experts are saying that too.
Fanhouse posted an article citing the end of Olympic competition to this very problem…they bring up numbers and even show an interesting statistic. Of all the Olympic contests, USA and Canada are the only gold medalists in women’s sports. The Scandinavians come next…but it’s a little bit of a drop down from there (in 2006 Sweden took silver and USA got bronze.)
Instead of just cutting it all together, it seems like the people upstairs want to use the examples in Canada and the USA to launch these other programs. Great…but will it work? Hayley Wickenheizer, Captain Canada (AKA- cool as ice lady) is pushing for just that. According to worldhockeysummit.com she’s the only speaker at the panel.
So what do you guys think? How many of you actually watch Women’s hockey? Do you know about USA vs. Canada on the estrogen stage? Did you watch it in the Olympics?
This is a pull away from my title-9 hate. I slam title 9 all the time, but really, girls need sports just as much as testosterheads do. If I didn’t have the Lady Ice Bulls, you all know I’d be batshit insane. Just sayin’
So, gimme your thoughts. What do you guys think will happen to an international stage for Women’s Ice Hockey. There’s an up and coming league now, who just had their first draft. Would you go to a women’s ice hockey game?
Hell. I would
-PJ
