[Hopey]

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Hopey,
You are forgetting that some LOVE competition.

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I'm not forgetting that at all. There are plenty of European hockey players who live to compete with the best in the world. Nicklas Lidstrom comes to mind.

However, there are also guys like Yashin and Mogilny, who couldn't be bothered to step it up in the playoffs. Unless it was a contract year, of course.

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They could be making a pretty penny in their home country while being even bigger stars there if they wanted.

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They'll never make as much in Europe as they would in North America. A few of the mid-range European NHLers can make about the same in Europe (as they are considered stars there), but there's a very good reason that all of the best players in the world come to play in the NHL -- and I'd argue that it has more to do with money than the level of competition that is offered.

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Instead, they come across to see how they stack up vs the best. Plus, you basically named 3 Europeans (and I disagree about Kovalchuk) and labeled almost all euros based on those 3.

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Nope, I said that the average European player is more likely to care less about the Stanley Cup playoffs than the average North American player. The North Americans grew up with the Stanley Cup playoffs, the Europeans did not.

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Why don't you name more than 3? Because I can name more than 3 NA players who don't care in the regular and post-season.


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This would really just comes down to our personal opinion as to what constitutes a poor playoff performer. And I agree that not every North American player is a solid playoff performer, of course.

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You are starting to sound like Don Cherry [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]


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I honestly can't stand Don Cherry, really. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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EDIT: I doubt they all want the season to end just so they can go join their national team... I don't even know why you would say such a thing without backing it up.

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The Hockey World championships are a MUCH bigger deal in the rest of the world than they are in North America. They get overshadowed in North America due to the fact that they occur during the Stanley Cup playoffs. I'm not sure how I can "prove" this to you, as I doubt there have been any polls done to gauge the average European's preference between the Stanley Cup and the World Championships.