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World Cup Hockey Has Underwhelmed, Fans Disappointed

By Tanner Rebelo

Sep 27, 2016; Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Team Canada goalie Carey Price (31) celebrates with teammates after defeating Team Europe 3-1 in game one of the World Cup of Hockey final at Air Canada Centre. Mandatory Credit: Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports
Sep 27, 2016; Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Team Canada goalie Carey Price (31) celebrates with teammates after defeating Team Europe 3-1 in game one of the World Cup of Hockey final at Air Canada Centre. Mandatory Credit: Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports /
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World Cup Hockey Action Has Been a Little Underwhelming Leaving Both Fans and Players Disappointed

World Cup Hockey has received criticism as of late regarding television rating numbers which have been poor with game 1 of the finals only drawing in 494,000 viewers on ESPN according to Sports TV Ratings.

For comparison, the Stanley Cup finals last year on NBC averaged just north of 3.4 million viewers throughout the series. A direct comparison to another sporting event on Tuesday night is the WWE Smackdown on USA which drew in 2.34 Million viewers in the same time period as game 1 of the finals for World Cup Hockey.

Now the NHL and ESPN had to know that the tournament would start off slow in its first time back in over a decade, but they couldn’t have predicted the lack of fandom in Toronto, a city that sleeps, eats, and breathes hockey.

Team USA Ryan Kesler Disappointed by Atmosphere In Toronto

"“It was weird,” American forward Ryan Kesler said of the tournament’s atmosphere, per the O.C. Register. “I thought there’d be more of a buzz in Toronto. There wasn’t … It just didn’t seem like there was a buzz.“If you didn’t know what was going on, you wouldn’t even know teams were playing. That’s the only thing I was really disappointed with.”"

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The issues for the tournament truly comes down to the timing of the tournament — early September, when the sports landscape is dominated by NCAA football and the NFL — almost guaranteed it would be buried. That early September start also mean even the most hardcore hockey fans (myself included) still viewed World Cup Hockey as something of an exhibition or glorified training camp.

Creating Team North America and Team Europe initially added an extra level of oddness. Even though both eventually proved worthy competitors and Team NA ended up outplaying Team USA. Team Europe has surprised a lot of fans, but even that hasn’t really helped increase the buzz around the tournament.

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Low Attendance A Norm

In Tuesday’s 3-1 loss to Canada in the first of the best-of-three final, Europe didn’t exactly bring in the fans. Several people in attendance tweeted out the alarming number of empty seats at the Air Canada Centre (see here and here), and Canadian forward Steven Stamkos addressed how the lack of rivalry with Europe meant the games would be a kind of boring experience.

"“It’s tough just because there’s not that natural rivalry here,” Stamkos explained, per Yahoo. “In some of the other games, we had away fans that were creating some noise.“This was probably the team that had the least amount of support, just because of the makeup of the team in the tournament to start with.”"

Games Scheduled At Worst Times Imaginable

Sep 27, 2016; Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Team Canada center Steven Stamkos (91) defends Team Europe forward Nino Niederreiter (22) during the third period in game one of the World Cup of Hockey final at Air Canada Centre. Mandatory Credit: Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports
Sep 27, 2016; Toronto, Ontario, Canada; Team Canada center Steven Stamkos (91) defends Team Europe forward Nino Niederreiter (22) during the third period in game one of the World Cup of Hockey final at Air Canada Centre. Mandatory Credit: Dan Hamilton-USA TODAY Sports /

Attendance issues have been a theme throughout the event. Several group games started at 3 p.m. EST on weekdays, which resulted in subpar crowd numbers at the Air Canada Centre. The highly-anticipated USA-Canada grudge match never really happened, and that was really due to  the Americans failing and becoming the tournament’s biggest disappointments.

North America’s elimination didn’t help the tournament either as many hockey fans in the United States had hoped they would be able to go on and face Canada in the finals. If a Canada-North America matchup was in the finals the tournament would arguably hold more interest.

Next: Team USA Disappoints Fans

In the end, all of this will probably be a major learning experience for the NHL and NHLPA, which is fair. This tournament was filled with several major unknowns coming in. Predicting how those would play out was a near impossible task. Now, both sides know what worked and what didn’t. And they’ve got plenty of time to make some changes.

Based on the success, or lack thereof in the World Cup of Hockey. It will be interesting to see if the league allows players to play in the next winter Olympics.

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