Now, the NHL no longer is a larger version of the local neighborhood. Increasingly, the players don't hail from the Great North. The best player in the game right now, Jaromir Jagr, hails from the Czech Republic. The hottest player in the league right now, Patrik Elias, is also from there.
The international flavor has been mixed with good old American cash to further eradicate hockey's small town flavor.
ABC/ESPN signed a $600 million deal for the television rights. The New York Rangers spent $68 million over the off-season on free agents. And their centerpiece, Theoren Fleury, came from Colorado, but it only had the Oxbow, Saskatchewan native because Calgary knew it couldn't resign him.
Heck, a couple of recent captains for the Canadiens didn't even know how to speak French.
Hockey is slowly becoming an American game. The paradigm Bettman is cultivating is not the kid from the pond, but the middle class tyke from suburbia, playing ball hockey on rollerblades, and stepping onto the ice for the first time in junior high school or (gasp) high school.
The Montreal Gazette printed the following editorial in response to this trend in the Canadian sport: "The public is increasingly fed up with the mediocre NHL product, the high ticket prices, and the bloated player salaries. It would be hard to think of a more undeserving recipient of taxpayer charity"
Undeserving indeed. As the NHL prospers, the taxpayers of Canada have decided that they will settle for whatever team can survive.
The exodus has already begun. The Quebec Nordiques are now the Colorado Avalanche; the Winnipeg Jets are the Phoenix Coyotes.
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