I do kinda feel the same way about the lockout potential, especially since the team I was talking about is the one Pekka Rinne used to play before going over (and yeah, no, it's not Jokerit. Those guys suck ass) and if he were to come and play for us again, he might potentially save our asses big time.
But on the other hand, in 2004-05 SM-Liiga season didn't actually feel the presence of NHL'ers all that much in the end. Other than maybe drawing a little more crowds to the stands (which I can't be sure of, since I haven't seen any actual records of the fact, just the vague recollection that many clubs did exceptionally well financially that year), as far as production goes, well.. Looking at the top 10 point scorers of the season, there isn't a single NHL player there. Which is weird, because there were a lot of NHL'ers in the SM-Liiga as well. So if the lockout happens and we do get a lot of players coming over here and they make a real difference, then yey. But if they just make a contract and then end up not playing a single came (No Selänne, why would I be talking about you. :p) then I'd much rather be watching them play across the pond.
As for the Worlds.. Having a lot of NHL players there would be super-great. I personally live about a two and a half hour train ride from Helsinki, and since Slovakia is playing there this year, I'm definitely planning on going to at least one game, assuming that they keep the ticket prices reasonable (no way am I paying more than a hundred euros for them, when even fifty will be taxing my budget to the max.) But the only that's going to happen is if the whole season gets canceled, which I understand is still just the worst case scenario. Problem is, and what I'm really worried about, is that we could end up in a situation similar to 1995 (as much as I hate to say that anything that happened in -95 is in anyway a bad thing..), where they just start the season late, and then play longer, meaning that by the time Worlds roll around, they haven't even finished with the regular season yet, and we get a total of zero NHL'ers at WC. Which would suck.
And yeah, my team is really great at the whole, cry your heart out thing. Partly because they lack any kind of consistency. Meaning that they're either really bad for a long time, to the point that they spent most of the '90s in the lower divisions, and then suddenly they're completely dominating the whole league for a few years. So just when you've gotten used to not excepting much from them, they go and win the play-offs 12-0. And then when you start thinking that yeah, we've been doing really great for a while now, maybe this will last, they finish the regular season last. And then there was that one time, when we had one of the most promising prospects of the current decade coming from our junior team, and for some reason decided that' hey, how about screwing him over by giving him a bull shit contract. And when that resulted in him regarding the contract as non-valid, which it was, and signing up with another team, trying to make the courts force him to come back to playing with us. Awesome team managing that..
Pretty much the only thing missing from the primer is me picking out which gold celebration vids to include, which is surprisingly hard, since I'd really just like to put all of them there, since they're made of awesome, and also because I keep having to remind myself that I'm supposed to work on the damn thing, not look highlight films about last years final over and over again..
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But on the other hand, in 2004-05 SM-Liiga season didn't actually feel the presence of NHL'ers all that much in the end. Other than maybe drawing a little more crowds to the stands (which I can't be sure of, since I haven't seen any actual records of the fact, just the vague recollection that many clubs did exceptionally well financially that year), as far as production goes, well.. Looking at the top 10 point scorers of the season, there isn't a single NHL player there. Which is weird, because there were a lot of NHL'ers in the SM-Liiga as well.
So if the lockout happens and we do get a lot of players coming over here and they make a real difference, then yey. But if they just make a contract and then end up not playing a single came (No Selänne, why would I be talking about you. :p) then I'd much rather be watching them play across the pond.
As for the Worlds.. Having a lot of NHL players there would be super-great. I personally live about a two and a half hour train ride from Helsinki, and since Slovakia is playing there this year, I'm definitely planning on going to at least one game, assuming that they keep the ticket prices reasonable (no way am I paying more than a hundred euros for them, when even fifty will be taxing my budget to the max.) But the only that's going to happen is if the whole season gets canceled, which I understand is still just the worst case scenario. Problem is, and what I'm really worried about, is that we could end up in a situation similar to 1995 (as much as I hate to say that anything that happened in -95 is in anyway a bad thing..), where they just start the season late, and then play longer, meaning that by the time Worlds roll around, they haven't even finished with the regular season yet, and we get a total of zero NHL'ers at WC. Which would suck.
And yeah, my team is really great at the whole, cry your heart out thing. Partly because they lack any kind of consistency. Meaning that they're either really bad for a long time, to the point that they spent most of the '90s in the lower divisions, and then suddenly they're completely dominating the whole league for a few years. So just when you've gotten used to not excepting much from them, they go and win the play-offs 12-0. And then when you start thinking that yeah, we've been doing really great for a while now, maybe this will last, they finish the regular season last.
And then there was that one time, when we had one of the most promising prospects of the current decade coming from our junior team, and for some reason decided that' hey, how about screwing him over by giving him a bull shit contract. And when that resulted in him regarding the contract as non-valid, which it was, and signing up with another team, trying to make the courts force him to come back to playing with us. Awesome team managing that..
Pretty much the only thing missing from the primer is me picking out which gold celebration vids to include, which is surprisingly hard, since I'd really just like to put all of them there, since they're made of awesome, and also because I keep having to remind myself that I'm supposed to work on the damn thing, not look highlight films about last years final over and over again..