Hockey -- No longer just a Canadian thing

Everyone seems to be a census taker or a census-taker wannabe lately. The National Hockey League is no exception.

At one time, the NHL was the domain of Canadian kids from Nova Scotia to British Columbia, with a few U.S. college kids thrown in. Now, we still have Canadian kids and a few American college kids, mostly from Minnesota, Massachusetts and Michigan, but, today, some other places have joined in the fun.

Those other places are countries that any schoolchild could point out on a map -- a map of Europe that is.

Hockey has gone global, and in the future, hockey might not just be "Canada's game" anymore.

By the year 2010, European players may out number Canadian players in the league, if the current influx of Europeans continues. Who knew?

What I can tell you though is that the Canadians are not amused.

How do you explain players like Vancouver's Markus Naslund, who is from Sweden, or the Minnesota Wild's scoring machine Marian Gaborik, who is from Slovakia, doing so well playing in North America?

Simple. You can't, so don't even try.

While Canadian and USA hockey coaches stress winning and grinding, the European coaches don't. They focus on passing, shooting, skating and a whole lot of practicing.

How else can you explain Pavel Bure of the New York Rangers, who isn't called "The Russian Rocket" for nothing? Or, what about players such as Peter Forsberg, Teemu Selanne and Jaromir Jagr who would make the U.S. Defense Department jealous with all the weapons at their disposal? Not to mention how they terrorize all of the goaltenders that face them.

Speaking of goaltenders, a few years ago, who had ever heard of Roman Turek of the Calgary Flames and Roman Cechmanek from the Philadelphia Flyers, both from the Czech Republic?

Along with the country of Slovakia, the Czech Republic has given the NHL so many players that one would think that they, not Canada, was the birthplace of hockey.

More and more NHL teams are sending scouts, not to look at players from the wheatfields of Manitoba and Alberta in Canada or to the frozen ponds of Massachusetts and Minnesota, but to Europe. They're sending them to places like Helsinki, Finland, Moscow and Prague, Czech Republic.

At the current rate of things, we might not have to wait until the 2010 hockey season to see more European players in the NHL. Next year might seem more like it.