CHL - Russia series

The WHL has released the list of players who will represent the WHL against the Russians next month in the annual ADT Canada-Russia Challenge. Unless the Russians start taking this tournament seriously and send some good players this year, the WHL kids should easily run their lifetime record in this challenge-less "Challenge" to 10-0.

For the hell of it, I did some research. Guess how many of the players that the Russians send to this tournament actually make their 22-man roster for the World Juniors each year? Pretty much none:

2003: 3 players (13.6% of WJC roster)
2004: 6 players (27.3% of WJC roster)
2005: 3 players (13.6% of WJC roster)
2006: 4 players (18.2% of WJC roster)

Probably not surprisingly, 2004 saw the Russians post their best result, winning both games against the QMJHL to go 2-4 in the tournament. They were 1-5 in 2003 and 0-6 in both 2005 and 2006.

And how many of the eventual 22-man Canadian WJC roster takes part each year:

2003: 20 players (90.9% of WJC roster)
2004: 21 players (95.5% of WJC roster)
2005: 18 players (81.8% of WJC roster)
2006: 19 players (86.4% of WJC roster)

Now, you have to consider that the CHL ices 70+ players in this thing each year while the Russians use 25 or so, so it's a lot easier for Canada to have their eventual WJC players playing at least a couple games. But still, even if you divided the Canadian %'s by three, they are still using a heck of a lot more eventual WJC players than the Russians are.

In fact, if you consider that some of Canada's WJC roster is playing NCAA every year and not even eligible for this tournament, the facts are that actually 100% of eventual CHLers on the Canadian WJC roster in the last four years have played in this tournament first. What's Russia's excuse for bringing 15% of their best players to this thing?

They don't take it seriously and neither should we the fans, or the CHL. Time to scrap it and go back to a CHL all-star format.