"Perhaps it was to attract attention for the Raptors in the world hockey capital, where the popularity of the perennially underperforming Maple Leafs is the equivalent of Chicago's for the Cubs." (Emphasis mine.)Toronto is the world hockey capital? Come again? Well, the Leafs did almost make the Stanley Cup final 15 years ago, the Marlies did manage to get more than 4,500 people out to Game 7 of a playoff series and an OHL team hasn't pulled up stakes and left the GTA in almost 12 months.
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Swirsky is an acquired taste. Credit to him for being the ambassador he was in T.O., but I was never a fan. He always seemed a bit too....[i] American [/i] for my taste (especially on his Fan 590 show). Hopefully, his replacement won't try and emulate him.
He can be a polarizing figure, but I loved Swirsky... one of the reasons I got into basketball (and specifically the Raptors) was because I enjoyed the writing and broadcasting of the media guys involved with the Raptors' coverage, like Swirsky, Leo Rautins and Jack Armstrong, Michael Grange and Doug Smith. They all know their stuff and can get casual fans interested while still providing insight to the knowledgeable. Swirsky's best trait was his enthusiasm, I thought: he, Rautins and Armstrong always sounded like they were having a blast, which made watching the games a lot more interesting.
Anyway, on the point of the post: yeah, calling Toronto the world hockey capital is somewhat sketchy, but there aren't that many alternatives. The only other city that could possibly make a good claim to the title is Montreal, and even though they've been much more successful, there doesn't seem to be quite as large of a national following for les Habitants. A large part of it is due to the media coverage, but that's really a chicken-or-egg thing: do people care about the Leafs because the Toronto-centered media does, or does the media care because they're writing (or broadcasting) for their audience? I think it's more the latter, in many ways, so I don't hate media outlets for their amount of Leafs coverage: it's a smart business move. I hate the Leafs with a passion, but they've always had a pretty strong national following (just go to a Canucks-Leafs match in Vancouver sometime and check out all the blue and white) and their own city is obsessed with them, so I might be willing to grant Toronto world hockey capital status (based solely on interest in the NHL, not AHL, OHL or CIS hockey). Montreal would probably be a better choice, but Toronto isn't all that farfetched.
Toronto isn't the world hockey capital, no, but I will steadfastly defend it being the NHL capital.
I'm sorry, but as ridiculous as it generally makes us look, the fact that the whole city would clog the streets after every single playoff win, no matter how minor it was, is a credit to that.
Sure, the city's rejection of junior hockey is unfortunate, but understandable for a city its size. Montreal doesn't exactly pack McConnell Arena for every Redmen game itself.
Wow, Tyler somewhat agreeing with me... better cover your heads, the universe might implode at any second.
I've agreed with you on a jillion things, I'm just as enthusiastic about it.
How about Minneapolis-St. Paul for Hockey Capital? Wild sell out each game, its high school boys and girls tournaments are followed as fervently as Indiana HS hoops or Texas HS football, and the college teams have big followings.
Which is why SI named Minneapolis-St. Paul as the new Hockey Town USA recently...
And, the hockey capital of the world is clearly Tweed, Ontario.
S... I?
It is the hockey media capital of the country, no doubt, and the appetite for hockey news amongst fans in Southern Ontario is insatiable. If you listen to Toronto sports radio in late July, well after the free agency frenzy is finished and truly the dead of the off-season and what are they talking about? Hockey, guaranteed. There will be a smattering of Jays and Argos talk, but inevitably it comes back to the Leafs and the NHL, because that is what people want to talk about. Now, it is similar in other Canadian NHL markets - the Team 1200 in Ottawa is basically all Sens, all the time, but the size of the population in Metro Toronto, combined with the media presence, seems to create this feeding frenzy of NHL interest that is, at the very least, unsurpassed in any other city.
That being said, the callers to sports-talk radio aren't really a representative sample of the populace at large, even the stations themselves would acknowledge as much. It's important to keep that in mind.
Honestly, I was in a restaurant the night that Mark Bell hit Daniel Alfredsson, and 2 of the 3 TVs were tuned to the Blue Jays, only one to Leafs-Sens.
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