Roller at the World Cup of Hockey?
If you’ve been keeping up with the 2016 World Cup of Hockey, you already know about the excitement behind Team North America and Team Europe, with the Europeans surprising just about EVERYBODY to reach the finals against Canada.
Over the last few weeks, the hockey world just can’t stop talking about the possibilities next time around. The ideas have been all over the place. Will we see a Canada “B” team? Maybe a 30+ or 35+ team of Canadian or North American “old guys” left off their nations’ rosters?
Will Team North America lose the “U23” qualifier and allow older players left off of their respective national teams? Some people have simply dubbed that “The Phil Kessel rule.”
Naturally, as rollerdads, we heard this and thought… what about a team of roller hockey players? Or at least guys that have played roller hockey?
That’s when we came up with “Team Wheel.”
In this fantasy land that has become the World Cup of Hockey, could a team of players with a background in roller hockey compete for the gold medal?
But first, We had to come up with some qualifiers… what makes someone a “roller hockey player?” What qualifies as at least some experience playing roller hockey? (or inline as it is known in many other places around the world.)
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Here’s what we came up with:
Experience playing at one of the Big Three North American tournaments (NARCh, State Wars, TORHS)
Experience playing at IIHF Inline World Championships or FIRS World Championships within the past 10 years (Sorry, Henrik Lundqvist)
Regularly plays back home during the summer (or has in recent years)
Regularly played growing up as a kid
Alright, so we’ve got that out of the way. Now we have the World Cup rules to deal with. Can we just poach any player from other team’s rosters? That probably wouldn’t fly.
We know that Team Europe was comprised exclusively of guys that didn’t have a chance to represent their country in the World Cup, because their country wasn’t asked to participate.
On the other hand, Team North America was a U23 team made up of the best young players from the United States and Canada. All eligible players aged 23 and younger were required to play for Team North America instead of their country, even if their country had planned on naming them to the roster.
Well, we’ve gotta come up with something in between. If Team North America returns next year, what will happen? The idea of one run of “mandatory service” is being floated: any player eligible must play at least once with that team. Then they’re eligible to play for their national team in the following World Cup of Hockey, if their country so chooses. (guys like McDavid, Eichel, Matthews etc. that still will be eligible will play for Canada and USA respectfully.)
So let’s call it the same. All eligible players that meet the requirements to be “roller hockey players” must play once for Team Wheel. Except here’s something else: limits are 4 players from any nation’s current World Cup roster. John Tortorella might have a heart attack if we took more than 4 of his guys.
Naturally, the names that everyone thinks of immediately are the big name American roller guys like Bobby Ryan, Paul Stastny, and the big man Pat Maroon. Lately, Jason Zucker and Beau Bennett have been making waves.
You can’t forget the other side of the pond, with guys like Ales Hemsky, whose dad coaches the Czech IIHF National Inline team. But we’re just touching the surface.
There’s quite a few European players that we think would make the cut. We did a little digging. We’ve got some names that might surprise you.
So you’ve got an idea of what this is all about. In our next blog, we’ll run down the player pool and start putting together the roster.
Oh, and make sure to take a look at wheelrdac.com. We’ve got a few new shirts up for the fall that we think you might like. #GoodRoller
