This article is by sports contributor Mr Sven-Åke Jonsson is copyrighted to its owner OTA-Berlin GmbH.
The opinions expressed are not necessarily those of OTA-Berlin but of the contributor.
We welcome any links to blog articles – however they may be reproduced or copied only with the prior written permission of OTA-Berlin GmbH. http://www.ota-berlin.de/
========================================================================
‘Live ab 0200 Uhr!’ – is what many sports blogs and newspapers are saying about the final game of the NHL series this evening – or tomorrow morning, whichever way you want to look at it.
It is the final of the North American ice Hockey league championships – which is dominated by Canadian and American players but also has many Swedes, Finns, Russians, Czechs, Slovaks and even some Germans – who happen to be represented on both of the last two teams.
Dennis Seidenberg is from Vaillingen-Schwenningen, a city in the Schwarzwald-Baar district in southern state of Baden-Württemberg and has played for the Boston Bruins since June of last year.
Christian Ehrhoff was born and raised in Moers, a city on the left bank of the Rhine and has played in Vancouver since August 2009.
Whichever team wins this final and the decisive 7th game for the Stanley Cup [and let’s hope it will be a first win for Vancouver!!!!] it is probably time for the proffessional sport of hockey in North America to turn around and do some much needed self-analysis.
The very fact that a final and semi-final can take up to 7 games and run into mid June hightlight the dominating commercial and profit oreinted interests which are the NHL. ‘Sport and money do not mix’ – and while not universally true – this old addage is certainly applicable to the present NHL.
From the alloting of franchises to the lack of consistency in officiating applying discipline on the ice it is becoming more and more apparent to most people that the NHL is big business – nothing more and nothing less.
Hockey is Canada’s national game – it is by nature a tough and physical game, but under the NHL many fans consider that it has become a real un-sportsmanlike travesty and criticism of the profit oriented NHL is only getting louder a more organized.
For some the NHL does a pretty good job – for others it comes across as a ‘red-neck’, macho and greedy bunch of corrupt money-hungry opportunists who make FIFA look almost holy by comparison.
These critics say that the NHL has in fact become an embarrassment for the sport of hockey and have stopped protecting the integrity of the game.
The NHL has had many chances in the past to send a clear and strong message to stop and ban needless body checks and violence on the ice – to state unequivocally that those kinds of actions are unacceptable and an embarrassment to hockey – but it has repeatedly failed to do so.
I hope the final tonight is a fair and exciting game and a victory for the home team of Vancouver – also that it will provide an impetus to rethink and clean-up the mess that the NHL has made of this wonderful game.
The influential ‘Süddeutschen Zeitung’ – perhaps the best newspaper in Germany wrote -
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/sport/eishockey-nhl-finale-nachfolger-von-uwe-krupp-gesucht-1.1108853
While there is less football/soccer to report the famous German football magazine Kicker reports in a detailed way on the game also – http://www.kicker.de/news/eishockey/startseite/553915/artikel_ehrhoff-oder-seidenberg.html
The local paper writes about ‘thier’ local hockey hero – http://www.wz-newsline.de/lokales/kreis-viersen/kempen/nhl-star-ehrhoff-familie-fiebert-mit-1.685612
OTA-Berlin has been a sponsor of the local Berlin ice-hockey team the ‘Berlin Eisbaeren’-
‘Ehrhoff oder Seidenberg’ ? – is the question many in Germany are asking! Which translates into Vancouver Canucks or Boston Bruins in Stanley Cup final today – by OTA-Berlin Constituency Blog Sports contributor Sven-Åke Jonsson from OTA Berlin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Germany License. If you use this article or parts of it, please refer to http://www.ota-berlin.de.
Tags: 'Berlin Eisbaeren', Christian Ehrhoff, Dennis Seidenberg, Ehrhoff oder Seidenberg, nhl make fifa look good, nhl unsportsmanlike, vancouver canucks
