-- [ From: Kepler * EMC.Ver #2.5.02 ] --
 
> Skill development??  If I accept what the Toronto Globe & Mail wrote two
yrs
> ago about the state of hockey in Canada, it sadly appears not to be the
case,
> otherwise there would be more Canadians in the NHL then there are now.
Look at
> the top lines in the NHL.
 
 
I think a lot of this has simply been a long time coming.  The log jam of
good Euro talent was going to eat into the Canadian (and hence juniors)
majority.   That will drive the Canucks nuts, of course.  These folks still
rank the opening game loss to the Russians in '72 as in some way showing
"the decline of Canadian hockey."
 
 
True, if you look at the defensive players being drafted high in the last
few drafts, many come from the juniors.  High skill "Princess Anne" forwards
split pretty evenly between the Euros and the colleges -- you don't see them
in the "W" at least, though we have our share of pesky mites.  Mucker
forwards come heavily from the CHL juniors, with a smattering from the Euros
and only the occasional collegian.
 
Goaltending is as always just random: freaks of nature don't seem to
correlate with nationality or development system.  ;-)
 
Add that some of that high skill "Euro" talent actually gets developed in
the juniors (limit of 3 Europeans per team, and *every* team goes to the
limit, and I think its arguable that the juniors are still developing skill
at all levels of the game.
 
 
> The "kukaloos", as Bobby Hull calls
> them, are almost ALL major junior grads.  Limited skills, but they can
sure
> hit, or punch.
 
Two words.  Ulf Samuelson.  ;-)
 
OK, I'm not one to debate by anecdote, and I agree with you to some extent.
I've only seen three years of the juniors, and in that time I've gone from
surprised to, well, unsurprised by the fighting in the game.  It doesn't
appear to me to be out of control, and it does have its own bizarre logic:
highly neurotic, but hardly psychotic.  The vets around me assure me that
"back in the day it used to be much worse," but who knows -- that may just
be the usual "we used to walk to school uphill both ways."
 
 
> PS  What the HECK happened Sat. night in Ithaca?
 
Looked like business as usual to me... (tries to keep straight face and
fails utterly).
 
--
 
*  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *  *
*  Greg Berge
*  Portland, Oregon
*  [log in to unmask]
*  www.spiritone.com/~kepler
*
*  "An theron heng a brooch of gold ful sheene,
*  On which ther was first write a crowned A,
*  And after, Amor vincit omnia."
*  -- Lines 160-162, General Prologue,
*     The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
*
 
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