So my friends and I have been playing a lot of NHL '09 (or "Chel") and decided to play a couple with international teams. Naturally we wanted to recreate some of the classic international match-ups Russia v. Sweeden, U.S.A. v. Russia, and of course, U.S.A v. Iceland. That's right, as kids who grew up in the 90's the most heated hockey rivalry is between Coach Bombay's U.S.A team and Wolf "The Dentist" Stanton's team from Iceland. Unfortunately, Iceland's hockey team (if they have one) isn't recognized in NHL '09, but in shuffling through the other countries my friends and I came to a mindblowing realization: Canada may not have been in D2: The Mighty Ducks.
We were stunned! It's safe to say hockey is Canada's game, no question about it. The Hockey hall of fame is in Toronto and the Canadian Junior Leagues are considered the gateway to the NHL. So why weren't they in D2:The Mighty Ducks?
I did a little research by rewatching the childhood classic and found that Canada was in the Junior Goodwill Games Tournament albeit in a loophole.
There you have it Canada was in a Group B while USA was in Group A. However if these groups only played each other in the finals, then why did USA play Iceland in the championship? We're led to believe that it's a round-robin format because we are told that Russia upsets Iceland, bringing the Vikings record even with USA's.
Lets jump back a bit because of the pairings of the groups. Group A consists of USA, Iceland, Italy, Trinidad-Tobago and Germany. Group B includes Sweden, Canada, Russia, Denmark and France. Group B is clearly the tougher division with Sweden, Canada, and Russia while the only two good teams in Group A are USA and Iceland. They could have switched Italy with Denmark so Group A at least gets a scandinavian team in the mix.
Am I reading too much into this? Probably, but there probably is a real reason for this. Disney realized they would have bigger market in Canada than Iceland or Trinidad-Tobago. Therefore they didn't have to worry about offending the Canadian market with stereotypes like the ones used with Iceland and especially Trinidad (see steel drums after they score a goal).
Thats some hardcore blogging!
ReplyDeleteWell the issue is, that Canada is in general a better team than the USA. Not a Canada bigot, just look at the stats of any age group International Hockey Tournaments, USA is always a contender, but rarely wins. So obviously, the Ducks (USA) have to win gold, but if Canada was in it, clearly they would have to be a finalist. But that poses another problem; the competition to the USA must be dirty and mean, bad sports. This way the USA gets sympathy of the viewer. But they can't make Canada like that because a) we aren't b) the movie was heavily marketed in Canada, so people would get really pissed off if we were the bad guys
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