re too many europeans in nhl in article rauser sfu ca rauser fraser sfu ca richard john rauser writes ten years ago the number of europeans in the nhl was roughly a quarter of what it is now going into the season the numbers of euros on nhl teams have escalated to the following stats canadians americans europeans please note that these numbers are rounded off and taken from the top players on each of the teams my source is the vancouver sun here s the point there are far too many europeans in the nhl i am sick of watching a game between an american and a canadian team let s say the red wings and the canucks and seeing names like bure konstantinov and borshevshky is this north america or isn t it toronto detriot quebec and edmonton are particularly annoying but the numbers of euros on other teams is getting worse as well from where i come from in canada borshevsky sounds more canadian than smith anyways crawl back into the hole you crawled out of the nba doesn t care where they get basketball players from major league baseball doesn t give a damn where they get baseball players from except cuba that is canada is in no imminent danger of being overtaken as the primary supplier of players sweden finland the czech republic and slovakia are all relatively small countries and cannot really produce players at a greater rate than they are already producing them and the potential influx from the former soviet union is severely blunted because the system has been raided and is starved for finances and will take a decade or two to recover and become a real threat and the us will just maintain its slow increase canada should continue to supply plus of the top hockey players in the world for the forseeable future besides we need the european hockey market if hockey is to take its rightful place besides soccer as the two predominant world sports and since soccer is essentially boring unlike hockey i live in vancouver and if i hear one more word about pavel bure the russian rocket i will completely throw up as it is now every time i see the canucks play i keep hoping someone will cross check bure into the plexiglassso hard they have to carry him out on a stretcher by the way i m not a canucks fan to begin with okay the stretcher remark was a little carried away but the point is that i resent nhl owners drafting all these europeans instead of canadians and some americans it denies young canadians the opportunity to play in their north american league and instead gives it to europeans who aren t even better hockey players it s all hype this european mystique is sickening but until nhl owners get over it canadian and american players will continue to have to fight harder to get drafted into their own league with the numbers of euros in the nhl escalating the problem is clearly only getting worse canadians are under no threat the european numbers will soon saturate if they haven t already and by the time russia comes online again the nhl should be a world league and there will be many more teams to stock and many more jobs for canadian hockey players in the near team the percentage of canadians will mostly decline because of americans not because of europeans i m all for the creation of a european hockey league and let the bures and selannes of the world play on their own continent i just don t want them on mine crawl into a hole and die gerald
