There was plenty of discussion during Monday’s session of the World Hockey Summit.
Issues in women’s hockey were brought up much like we wrote about earlier, with Canadian women’s national team captain Hayley Wickenheiser pointing out the troubling fact that Russia only has six rinks where females can play hockey. Steve Yzerman similarly mentioned a lack of arenas in Florida while Daniel Alfredsson opined in favor of European-sized versions. Hockey parents, fighting and the KHL transfer agreements were also topics of discussion.
Ultimately, though, CBC’s Jeff Marek concluded that there wasn’t much to the proceedings.
And at the end of Day 1, many of us came away with the same question: What is this?
I’d like to say it was a discussion but it really wasn’t. Hockey personalities from across the globe, representing a myriad of different interests, had their say on their “sweet-spot” topics and then answered a couple of questions. Each session lasted no longer than 30 minutes.
Nobody came off point and with an assembly-line format, no new ground was broken. There were no “ah ha!” moments.
And while the topics and discussions were lively, we’ve heard all this stuff before. That’s what many of us concluded after the first session.