Who The Heck Does Minnesota Think They Are?
August 6th, 2008 by SteveApparently Minnesota went and decided it has the most “sophisticated” hockey fans on the planet. Recently I linked to this Minnesota Wild blog whilst reading another posting by Mike over at the Sharks site here at hockeyanalysis.com. I think the first salvo has been fired in a “we know more about hockey than anyone” war. Oh, and take note of the title relating to NHL myths. They seem to be perpetuating a few of their own on this one:
Myth Crackers: Popular NHL myths Split wide open
By Tom LynnWild fans are the most sophisticated fans of any NHL team. This is the inevitable result of living in the State of Hockey, with the world’s largest and most popular high school tournament, the highest number of youth hockey participants of any state, five Division I college teams, and numerous other varsity and club college teams. This does not even include the numerous pond players and adult leagues.
Really? I mean, sure they’re into the game, and I certainly agree that Minnesota is as dedicated to hockey (if not more dedicated to it) as any of the other 50 states. But this article basically pretends that all of the NHL franchises are American. Why else would all references be in comparison to the other 50 states? Why else would the number of “varsity” and “club college teams” be mentioned as some sort of grand indicator of hockey sophistication? Lets see… just to get into it in a bit more detail, here are some stats for comparison to Canadian points of a similar nature.
The world’s largest and most popular high school tournament? I don’t really think this is entirely accurate. It might be the largest “High School” tourney, but I don’t think it’s the largest tournament of high school age talent at this level. The Minnesota State High School Hockey Tournament is made up of 16 teams in a AA and AAA bracket format. It has seen regular attendance of over 120,000 people yearly, and in 2004 set the most recent record with an attendance of 120,114 people.
That’s nice and all, but it’s still not as good as the Mac’s AAA Midget tournament held in Calgary, Alberta yearly. Firstly, the Mac’s Tournament is international, with the most recent champions being Russia Severstal. 25 male teams, and 12 female teams enter the competition, with attendance regularly surpassing 130,000 spectators over 7 days of competition. While individual games see smaller crowds of around 3,000, the championship is typically played in front of over 10,000 spectators. 130,000 is a bigger number than 120,000 - and there’s teams competing from all over the world, not just Minnesota. Nice try land of 10,000 lakes!
Ok next up… the highest number of youth hockey participants of any state? Minnesota had 35,324 boys and 8,361 girls registered to play hockey last year according to the Minnesota Amateur Hockey Association. In Ontario alone, there were 160,012 registered children playing minor hockey. Actually, on top of that, there were 25,050 coaches. Ontario children playing hockey outnumber the Minnesotans about 4 to 1. I think we’ve got that base covered.
5 division 1 college teams? Who cares? Minnesota isn’t even the top state in that regard. Michigan has 8 NCAA division 1 teams. Massachusets has 10, New York has 10. Minnesota isn’t even the top NCAA hockey state in the country. Why would you post that as a reason to say you know more than everyone else? Beats me. Plus I could mention the fact that Ontario has 15 Universities that compete in Hockey in the CIS, which is the highest level of University sports in the country. Oh and then there’s the 8 Atlantic Universities with hockey programs up here, and the 7 schools out West. 5 NCAA division 1 schools… like that matters?
Adult players - I don’t see much point in even comparing these numbers as you already probably get the picture.
So basically the Minnesota Wild are assuming that because a high proportion of Minnesotans play hockey, they know it better than everyone else? Talk about pandering to your fan base. They don’t even know HOCKEY numbers better than anyone else. I suppose when hockey takes place in a vacuum, you don’t think much about the outside world, but last I checked 2 of the original 6 franchises were Canadian, and there’s more Canadians playing the game than anywhere else on the planet. I’m glad they’re taking pride in the game, but seriously… what gives?
Oh, and I’m not suggesting Toronto fans are more sophisticated than anywhere else, I just think this was a bit retarded on Tom Lynn’s part.
Posted in Uncategorized
3 Responses to “Who The Heck Does Minnesota Think They Are?”
By David Johnson
on Aug 6, 2008
You only just started on the nonsense written in that post.
First off, lets have a history lesson. Most people consider the modern era of hockey to have started in the 1942-43 season when there were in fact 6 teams. Those were the original 6 as we know them now, Toronto, Montreal, Boston, Detroit, Chicago and the NY Rangers. The league remained 6 teams until expansion to 12 teams in 1967-68.
But, if we want to go back further than 1942, we could go back as far as 1917-18 when there were four teams, though only 3 finished the year as the Montreal Wanderers arena burned down. There were 8 teams in the NHL at various points in history but to imply that the NHL originally had 8 teams would be completely false.
Now on to the myth. When most people talk about expansion diluting talent in the NHL, they aren’t generally talking about the 1967-68 expansion from 6 to 12 teams, though that no doubt diluted talent, they are talking about the expansion through the 1990’s and early 2000’s from 21 teams to 30 teams and they talk about the 1970’s and 1980’s hockey as being the better brand of hockey.
The truth is, you simply increase the number of teams in a league by nearly 50% in a decade without diluting talent. If in one year there are 28 teams and the next year there are 30 teams, there will be a dilution of talent. You must find approximately 7% more players and I can guarantee you that they won’t be first line players you find. The hope is that over time you can increase the popularity of the sport which in turn will generate more participants which in turn will generate more top end talent, but in the short term expansion can only do one thing. Dilute talent.
Is the 2008 NHL less talented (per team) than the 1998 NHL or the 1988 or the 1978 NHL? I am not sure, but I can tell you this, if there were four fewer teams in the NHL, the remaining 26 teams would have measurably more talent than they do now.
By Steve
on Aug 6, 2008
Yeah I’m inclined to agree. Here’s a few problems I have with the random calculations Lynn is tossing around to justify his point.
1) The idea that women were participating at the same levels in 1967 (or 1951) as they are now is preposterous. I do not intend that to be in any way sexist, but it’s obviously a fact.
If we drop the number of female participants from the current Canadian total, there’s only 471,572 registered male players. Considering the male population of Canada currently around 15 and a half to 16 million, that means the actual participation number should be around 3.0%, not 1.75%.
That means the participation level should be estimated at around 300,000 for 1966 (assuming roughly half of the 20 million people or so living in Canada at the time were males).
2) All of this is assuming participation is a fairly constant percentage, which I am frankly unsure of, since the numbers fluctuate by almost 15,000 yearly, and are actually LOWER now than they were 10 or 11 years ago. In 1996-97 the participation rate of males was an even higher 3.4% in Canada.
If we assume the increasing immigrant population has actually dented the popularity of hockey to replace it with sports such as basketball (again no bias here, just stating the obvious), we could easily assume that at one point hockey saw participation rates of 4 to 5% among males in Canada. Using a more logical number of roughly 4.5% we can determine that the number of hockey playing males in Canada in 1966-67 was probably around 450,000. Actually not far from what it is today… and really not that unrealistic.
3) The number of players has gone from 178 who played at least 1 game in the NHL in 1966-67 to the 852 who played at least 1 game in the NHL last season. That’s an increase of 478%.
One of the serious flaws in his logic that I see is in the “turnover” of hockey players from year to year. In 1966, 43 of the 178 players who played in the NHL regular season or playoffs saw 10 games or less of action. That means there were 135 players of regular NHL calibre.
Of the 852 players who made it to the NHL for at least 1 game last year, 130 of them played 10 games or less. That means 15% of those players “making it” to the show, are basically interchangeable spare parts as far as their teams are concerned. Leaving us with 722 players who attained fairly regular status with an NHL franchise.
135 to 722 is an even more sizable 534% increase in the number of NHL players. For there to be an equivalence in the talent level at the top end, there would have to be a similar 534% upscaling in the available hockey playing population. According to my estimates above there would be roughly 450,000 hockey playing males in 1966. For there to be a 534% increase in available hockey talent the available population would have to be increased to 2,403,000.
Unfortunately, according to his own data the nations producing hockey players only have 1,350,000 players, INCLUDING WOMEN.
Suffice it to say, for there to be an equivalent talent pool between the last season pre-expansion and the current NHL era - hockey is going to need to add another 1,053,000 players worldwide. That’s roughly equivalent to the entire hockey playing population of Canada, the US, and Finland combined. Can you say “Find those untapped markets” Mr. Bettman?
I’m thinking if they make it bigger in South Korea and China they can easily replace the talent drop. China only has 412 registered hockey players. South Korea only has 1,461 registered players. Considering how well they do at other ice sports like figure skating and speed skating, I don’t think hockey should be too far off the radar. They also have a combined population of 1.375 billion people. If they could convince 1.75% of them to play hockey we would suddenly have a pool of 34 million players to choose from! That should improve the talent draw!
By Chemmy on Aug 7, 2008
Don’t forget about how fucking big Minnesota is. They might win awards based on some state lines, but Minnesota is over 17,000 square miles larger than New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts combined.
And sorry MN, the best hockey in the states is played in the northeast.