Make the Olympics an Under-20 Tournament

Now that three European nations not named Russia have captured the gold, silver and bronze medals at the Turino Olympics, maybe the time is right for returning the Olympic hockey tourney to its Cold War-era "amateur" past, and give the tourney to youngsters too young to remember past Olympic inequities.

Those of us old enough to remember the 1980 U.S. Olympic victory and the Cold War recall how Olympic rules regarding eligible athletes perversely placed the free world’s best players on the sidelines for what was defined as an “amateur” tournament under old Olympic rules.  

This led to a situation where various Canada Cup and Summit Series events provided the only level playing field for elite international competition; the Olympics did not.

For years, the free world fielded teams of college kids and junior players who qualified as amateurs while communist regimes placed their nation’s finest in Olympic squads.  This situation is what famously made the U.S. "Miracle On Ice" gold medal victory an actual Cold War victory, since the inequity was so obvious, so galling, so maddening.  The timing played a role, too, with the emergence of the Ayatollah Khomeini and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Of course, the final dagger in the heart of European communism came in the period 1989-91, when the end finally came for the Soviet Union and other brutal and merciless engines of repression and slavery.  Happily, freedom’s ultimate victory came when Petr Klima, Sergei Fedorov and Alex Mogilny defected, as did others.

Now, however, the hockey world is populated with players too young to remember the Cold War (that's too bad, because the appreciation of freedom itself is a story for another column).  Now, young NHLers include Russians who have been free to come and go for years, also Czechs,  Germans and others unacquainted with concepts like “Berlin Walls.”

Now that the NHL has had a few Olympic experiences fielding teams of its finest, it’s time to make the Olympics an Under-20 tournament, for youngsters only.

This is no swipe at the Swedish, Finnish and Czech clubs, who dominated competition.  In fact, with respect to those countries, now would be the perfect time to end the NHL "Dream Team" Olympic experience.  The playing field has been leveled across Europe and North America; no one looks at Swedes, Finns or Czechs as lesser players and no one in their right mind has, for at least a decade or two.  Peter Forsberg, a Swede, is widely considered the game's greatest player; Teemu Selanne, a Finn, its Comeback Player of the Year; Jaromir Jagr, a Czech, will likely win the NHL scoring title, and Alex Ovechkin, a new generation, post-communism Russian, will be the league's rookie of the year.

The playing field has been leveled across the hockey world and it's time for some under-20 kids to bring a youthful spark to the Olympics again, now that equal opportunity for all nations is at hand. 

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