These Generic Ass Jerseys Teams Are Being Forced To Wear At The IIHF Women's Hockey World Championships Is Nothing Less Than An Act of War
Women's hockey does not exist without the United States and Canada. Throughout the 36-year history of the IIHF Women's World Championship, every single gold medal game has been a matchup between USA and Canada besides one. That was in 2019 when Finland made it to the gold medal game as the host country. They lost to USA 2-1, and Canada won bronze 7-0 that year. Every single gold medal game at the Olympics for women's ice hockey has been a matchup between USA and Canada besides one. That was in 2006 when Sweden lost to Canada in the gold medal game, and USA won bronze.
Moral of the story here is that no other nation besides USA or Canada has ever won gold at a major international competition. It's not that they're just the best two teams at every tournament. It's that they are the only teams that actually have a chance at winning.
So if there were 2 teams that could tell the IIHF to shove it up their ass and take a hike, it's USA Hockey and Hockey Canada. You want to throw them in these practice jerseys because their actual uniforms go against your silly little manufacturing deal with TRUE? Okay. Have fun trying to put on a tournament when USA and Canada decide to just go play a best-of-7 between themselves in Red Deer.
Hockey has seen plenty of shitty uniforms in the past. USA and Canada have both had awful uniforms before, although Hockey Canada is usually a little too scared to take too many uniform risks. But most of the time there is at least some effort put behind a shitty uniform. These are just lazy. They don't fall into the category of being so bad that they're actually good. It's arguably even worse marketing for TRUE than it would be to just allow them to wear their regular Bauer and CCM uniforms.
P.S. -- I'll beat the comment section to the joke. "Well NOW I'm definitely not watching the women's world championship".