A clash of styles
By LANCE HORNBY -- Toronto Sun
The first on-ice challenge for the Swedes in the World Cup was not in Mats Sundin's heart, but in the seat of Roger Bergman's Zamboni.
Faced with curtailing his grand ovals after 15 years on the big ice at the Globen Arena here in Stockholm, the 52-year-old Bergman had to adapt to the reconfigured National Hockey League-sized rink, without scratching a single Skoda rinkboard ad. He aced the steering job.
"Now we finish in four (laps) fewer," Bergman said with a grin. "I like it."
What Bergman isn't keen on is the product that goes on the ice that he has carefully groomed. The former club team goaltender is unsure what to make of the Cup's NHL rules, its crash-and-bang style and the rink dimensions. The Swedes play fluid, tactical hockey on an ice sheet that measures 200 feet by 98.5 feet, the NHL puts its behemoths on one that's 200-by-85.
"I saw the Sweden-Finland (exhibition) and I was not impressed," Bergman said. "They played Canadian rules ... I had to wonder if I was watching Canadian players, too. It was awful. There were so many tackles, it was hard to avoid them.
"In some situations it was like you had a wrestler in front of the net. Maybe they should just put skates on a wrestler. The big-ice hockey is better. You can see more."
With money and national pride at stake, the league and the NHL Players' Association did not stage the Cup with the goal of converting the heathen to the North American game. But attendance in the Swedish league has suffered in recent years and jazzing up a game that sometimes looks like soccer on skates has crossed people's minds here. Tomas Holmstrom, the gate-crashing forward of the Detroit Red Wings, thinks it could catch on.
"I think the fans here are positive to the smaller rink," he said. "More things happen. In the NHL, you can shoot from the corner and it's a dangerous shot, but in Europe it's just a bad angle. I hope they can change the ice here."
Mike Murphy, NHL vice-president of hockey operations and supervising Cup venues in Stockholm, Helsinki, Prague and Cologne, backs Holmstrom's view. But he doesn't expect tastes to change overnight.
"It's hard to alter what people have grown up with," Murphy said. " One of the true attributes of most of those players from Europe is their great puck and passing skills and certainly the wider ice lends itself to that.
"But it's ingrained in us to have a smaller rink. Plays happen quicker, you're on top of the goalie quicker. Very often on the big rink everyone stays in the middle of the ice and no one goes to the boards to check.
"But we can argue this back and forth. I'm no expert on European hockey, I just love to see guys have to compete for territory on the ice and for the chance to score."
As Europe wrestles with North American rink ideology, the watered-down 30-team NHL is under pressure to shut its own trap. A slate of proposed rule changes, from widening the lines to moving the nets back, are to be tested in the AHL but aren't close to being implemented in the NHL until the collective bargaining agreement gets sorted.
Then there's the four-on-four faction that believes if team owners won't sacrifice seats to widen the ice, then dropping one man per side is the logical step. Murphy can't stomach the thought.
"I think if we ever went to four-on-four, our game would last about two weeks and no one would ever watch it again," he said. "Four-on-four works great in overtime, in a no-lose game situation. As a full diet, you'd get very tired of it."
It will take a lot to convince Bergman, whose first impressions were of a game that came down to scrums in front of the net and in the corners.
"I missed seeing the hockey," he said.
