By ROSS McKEON
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
As much as they hate to hear it north of the border, Canada is losing its grip on hockey _ or what it calls "Its Game."
A look at what is happening in today's National Hockey League shows the European invasion is taking hold. Every year, more players from overseas find their way onto the 30 team rosters, and now they are making an impact like never before.
To wit:
_ Europeans have dominated the first quarter of the 2006-07 season. Heading into Tuesday's games, the four top scorers are from Europe: Atlanta's Marian Hossa (Czech Republic), Ilya Kovalchuk (Russia) and Vyacheslav Kozlov (Russia) and the Rangers' Jaromir Jagr (Czech Republic).
The league leaders in goals (Hossa), assists (Jagr), goals-against average (Detroit's Czech goalie Dominik Hasek), and plus-minus (Detroit's Swedish defenseman Nicklas Lidstrom) all hail from Europe.
_ Thirteen teams (43 percent) are captained by European-born players. The list is Boston's Zdeno Chara (Czech Republic), Florida's Olli Jokinen (Finland), Los Angeles' Mattias Norstrom (Sweden), Montreal's Saku Koivu (Finland), Nashville's Kimmo Timonen (Finland), New Jersey's Patrik Elias (Czech Republic), the Islanders' Alexei Yashin (Russia), Ottawa's Daniel Alfredsson (Sweden), Philadelphia's Peter Forsberg (Sweden), Toronto's Mats Sundin (Sweden), Vancouver's Markus Naslund (Sweden), Lidstrom and Jagr.
Not to be overlooked, of the six Canadian-based teams, only Calgary and Edmonton have non-European captains.
_ On the NHL All-Star ballot, 40 of the 100 players listed _ including 27 of the 60 forwards _ are native Europeans. And, on Monday, when the league awarded its three stars for the week, all were European players (Calgary goalie Miikka Kiprusoff of Finland, Hasek and Kozlov).
According to a recent study conducted by the International Ice Hockey Federation, 28.3 percent of NHL players are from Europe, a 2 percent increase over the same time last year and an all-time high.
"This must be considered a recognition of European hockey and European players," said Rene Fasel, president of the IIHF. "It is on one hand sad that we and the European leagues lose so many players, but on the other, it presents a great opportunity for the players to perform at that level and to make a living."
Possibly the biggest reason for another influx of European talent into the league is the NHL's crackdown on defensive interference since coming out of the lockout in 2005. European players have been thought to have superior skills to North American players for a long time and what is happening in today's NHL is doing everything to support that opinion.
