USA Hockey is talking out of both sides of its mouth.
Buffalo was recently named the host of the 2018 World Junior Championship. Along with this announcement came the news that Ralph Wilson Stadium, home of the Buffalo Bills, would host an outdoor game between the U.S. and Canada. Buffalo is an outstanding choice for the World Junior Championship as they’re a big hockey market which successfully hosted the event back in 2011, but USA Hockey’s comments about their selection cast things in a negative light.
USA Hockey loves to trumpet the fact that hockey is growing in the United States. During the press conference to announce the 2018 host, it again came up that the sport is on the rise in America. Did they not see the irony in the whole situation? Bragging about the game of hockey growing in the United States while awarding Buffalo another big hockey event is pretty contradictory.
https://twitter.com/TravisSBN/status/672877082909765632
Dave Ogrean, executive director of USA Hockey, discussed how hard it was to choose a host city.
“It was a very, very difficult process. That’s a great problem to have. It was not always like this. Fifteen years ago we were soliciting people to please host this event, but we’ve had a radical sea change in the popularity of the World Junior Championships and in the popularity of our sport. And so as we went through the process this time, we had… some sleepless nights because of friends we would be saying ‘no’ to despite the fact they put in very strong and compelling bids and we want to thank those cities and we will be doing events in those cities in the future I am sure. The good thing is there are so many places in America that love hockey, support hockey, and want to have events of this kind there. It makes our decisions very difficult.”
To reiterate, he said how great the candidates were and how big the event is getting and yet the same city which hosted in 2011 is going to host again in 2018? Something isn’t adding up. If hockey has grown as much as USA Hockey has stated, why not award Pittsburgh? Or St. Louis? Or one of the other cities? If hockey truly has grown, the event should be able to flourish in a variety of locations around the U.S., but instead they fell back with ol’ reliable.
https://twitter.com/TravisSBN/status/672880962661822464
Bingo.
Buffalo is the safe decision for USA Hockey as they know the event probably couldn’t support itself – particularly the outdoor game in an NFL stadium – unless Canadians were able to easily attend. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that fact, but it’s frustrating to hear USA Hockey blow smoke about growth and popularity when in reality they were too scared to leave their comfort zone of Buffalo.
