Although the continuing strikes in Canada and America over the distribution of money in the NHL are bad news for everyone, they have thrown up a small amount of good news for fans of the sport here in England, not that there is many of us.
roughly 300 of the players from the American league have flown to Europe and England to play the sport in the respective leagues. Although they're not the very best players from the NHL, they're all considered superstars by fans of the sport outside of America. Just one player is Belak, formerly of the Toronto Maple Leafs, who has begun playing in the English league with "Coventry Blaze", this has seen the highest ever attendance at a league hockey match in England when Blaze played against "The Bees", the attendance was just over 9000. That is not very much considering the Blaze are our biggest hockey club and considering the highest ever attendace to a football league game in England was well over 110,000 ... nine thousand pales into insignificance. But still 9000 is triple the average attendance for the Blaze so you can see what a big impact it has had on the game here in England.
I still hope, as I'm sure most of you do, that the situation with the NHL is resolved as soon as possible, because while its doing wonders for the English game, the English game could still never be as fast, exciting or adrenaline pumping as the American game.
Anyway, this is open to dicussion, I'd like to know what the rest of you Hockey fans think about this and how you think the situation in America can be solved, if indeed it can be solved.