Hockey

Am Canadian, and absolutely not. As much as I hate murica, having the NHL be in both Canadian and murican cities is better for the game. Even Canadians that aren't into hockey are at least kind of aware of the big games and big names, same can't be said for murica. The more people that play the game and have a chance at making the big leagues, the better IMO.

That being said, I have a huge list of grievances with the NHL and I often see the sentiment of "best sport, worst league" among hockey fans and I agree with that completely. Refs are complete and utter trash, so is the department of player safety. The league is, IMO, quite corrupt and needs a top down reform to expel the old boys club from the top echelons of the league.

Hockey Canada itself as an organization is also extremely toxic and relies far too much on the old boys club as well. Just look at the sad state of Canadian goalies lately, we went from Price, Brodeur, Fleury, Luongo, Roy, etc to now having Binnington and Thompson as the Olympics goalies for Canada. Don't get me wrong they aren't bad, but it's a far cry from the prime days of Canada pumping out extremely high quality goalies consistently. Now were average at best, and other countries, including the US (🤮) having much better goalies than us.

There's also the whole cost thing, hockey has become a rich persons sport. You don't stand a chance of making it to the big leagues unless you're either a generational talent like McDavid or Price, or you spend tens of thousands over the years on professional 1 on 1 coaching. I'm 32 and I had to quit playing organized hockey at 14 cause my parents couldn't afford to pay for the goalie gear and team fees etc and that was back in the mid 2000s. Shits only gotten worse since then.

If Canada wants to retain it's position as the dominant hockey nation, then there are a lot of hard changes that need to be made. How many future Price's, Crosby's and McDavid's have simply been priced out of the game and will never get the chance to be what they could've been?