Quote:
Originally Posted by CDSmith
The Czechs have always been strong. Now that the Slovaks and them are separated the Slovaks will have strong teams too.
I don't agree that it's boring. The German team is looking stronger and stronger, as are the Swiss. I would however like to see France get into the hockey thing, because we certainly mine a lot of great French-Canadian players here in Canada, you'd think the people of France would take that cue and jump on board. They're more a soccer(football) nation though, seems to be little interest in the fastest sport on ice so far.
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Ice Hockey never had tradition in France, apart from a bronze medal they did on some of the very first championships if I remember.
Even their last years in the World championship A group half of their team were naturalized Canadians who didn't make it in NHL and played in French league, many of them well in their late 30's.
It's also connected with the total base of registered junior players, while I remember there were 200 000 registered around here ten years ago (for a 10 mil. population) it's going to also get worse as kids generally don't do sports these days and there's less new players every year.