We’re being inundated with the fact that five Chicago Blackhawks are in the finals today and that a few others were with other teams. I’m curious as to what percentage of all the hockey players in the Olympics are with the NHL. I presume those that are not play in European leagues or are university players, but I haven’t found that info anywhere. Jaromir Jagr was in the tournament and I think he WAS in the NHL but I don’t think he’s playing now. Dopers?
A little more than half - 141 out of 276. That’s largely because five of the teams, Switzerland, Belarus, Norway, Latvia and Germany, have few if any NHLers on their squads. There’s a number of those players that have been in the NHL of course, and there’s a fair number of KHL players in the tournament. Some are scrubs that couldn’t make an NHL roster except as a peripheral player, and some are significant, such as the aforementioned Jagr, Alex Radulov, Sergei Fedorov, Richard Zednik, etc. etc.
Also, I believe everyone in today’s gold medal game (USA vs Canada in case you live under a rock) is a current NHL player.
Jagr (or “Yammy” as Don Cherry calls him) currently plays for Avangard Omsk in the Russian/Central Asian Kontintental Hockey League.
Just think how happy New York Islanders fans can be with today’s game. They can hear their former buffoon GM Mike Milbury analyze a game where the starting Canadian goalie Roberto Luongo (traded away by Milbury so he could draft an injury-prone goalie Ric DiPietro) tiesy to stop Zach Parise whom Milbury refused to draft (Parise’s father J.P. score one of the most famous goals in Islander history, eliminating the hated Rangers in 1975).
Don’t forget that had the Isles had kept Luongo, they could have drafted Dany Heatley with the #1 pick instead.
To round out the top four: Finland had 18 NHL players, four KHL players, and one Elitserien player. Slovakia had 13 NHLers, eight KHL players, one Elitserien player, and one Slovak Extraliga player.