Off Wing Opinion

Here's a passage from Eric Duhatschek's post on Team Quebec that got me thinking:

If the IIHF suddenly amended its rules and permitted provinces, states or Thunder Bay, Ont. to enter the tournament (hey, with the four Staal brothers leading the way, why not?), then it would defeat the purpose of having a world championship in the first place.

Which leads me to ask, why doesn't hockey hold it's own version of the Little League World Series? Imagine what it could be like:

Hi, this is Mike Emrick, and welcome to the Bell Center in Montreal, Quebec, Canada for the first hockey championship for the best players in the world age 12 and under. Joining me for today's championship game between Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and Eveleth, Minnesota are Pierre Maguire and John Davidson...

It would be a ratings killer in Canada. We could have regional representation like this:

Maritimes
Quebec
Ontario
Canada West (Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, B.C.)
U.S. East (New England, Mid-Atlantic, South)
U.S. West (Midwest, Great Lakes, Western U.S.)
Finland
Sweden
Russia
Czech Republic
Slovakia
Germany

That gives you two divisions with six teams each. But while the teams would represent regions, we'd know them by the names of the towns where they live and play hockey: Lulea, Oulu, Sverdlovsk, Pizen, Melrose, Flin Flon and all the others.

I think it would kill, and I know that I'd watch. And who cares whether or not it's practical. We can all dream, can't we?

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 2nd, 2006 at 12:48 pm by Eric McErlain and is filed under Hockey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.