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World Cup of Hockey's big show about nothing set to begin
It’s a money grab, a tournament with a sporadic history and without much of an identity, a chest-beater, and the grandest gathering of hockey talent ever -- much of the conversation ahead of the optimistically named “World Cup of Hockey” is on point, even if it seems to also miss the point. As an event, this appears to be headed into the territory suggested in that oft-quoted line describing Seinfeld -- a show about nothing.
Its elements run from the improvisational -- the mix of national and made-up teams to make up a field of eight -- to the avant, as in the Frank Gehry-designed trophy that victorious Canadians passed around as if it was radioactive 12 years ago. As for the exclusively Air Canada Centre schedule, it merely confirms the general national perception that Toronto should just get over itself.
Whether anyone will care about this strange thing in great detail isn’t much in question -- we will, for sure, and not always by choice, witness the relentless advertising blitz around Toronto this month. While it’s on for these next two weeks, it will draw eyeballs, comment and engagement. And as the greater hockey world gears up for another NHL season, that’s quite enough (speaking of money grabs, I give you the NHL preseason, starting right in the middle of the WCH), at least until the next time the league, the players, their CBA and the sponsors determined that the time and conditions are right. This is the first one of these in 12 years, and at least for this renewal there’s no nuclear winter of a lockout blotting the horizon -- just the Olympics are the question mark, except for Alex Ovechkin.
No two players epitomize the absorbing tightrope this WCH is negotiating than Connor McDavid and Auston Matthews. One is Canada and the NHL’s most exciting young hockey talent, while the other is right behind him as the Maple Leafs' latest hope and thus will be scrutinized in Toronto closer than any other player.
Of course, they're also part of the tournament’s most makeshift edges with the made-up outfit known as Team North America, a collection of 23-and-under kids from Canada and the U.S. who are, at least in the pre-tournament going -- the exhibitions before the exhibition -- every neutral’s hope for their youthful brio.
This is the thing for McDavid, though: until he shows up in a Canada jersey, perhaps even at the next Olympics -- and until the World Cup takes a regular spot on the calendar, it’s the Olympics that remains the the game’s grandest international stage -- this will go down as something of a curio in his career, like the trophy they're playing for or those rather cool North America jerseys. Only Matthews, whose next international assignment will come in a USA uniform, carries close to the hefty baggage that McDavid lifts. And he has some learning to do about that.
Matthews grabbed his own hockey bag and started to walk off. The equipment manager had to remind him that people are paid to do that for him
— Marc Dumont (@MarcPDumont) September 12, 2016
The heavy lifting begins Saturday. The really heavy lifting comes Oct. 12, when the NHL returns. Until then, a show about nothing might not sound like much -- but it is something. It’ll have to do.
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