The number of Europeans in the NHL has decreased from 300 players in 2003-04 to 262 in 2005-2006. As usual, the Czechs are the biggest foreign group with 65 players, followed by 51 Russians. The decrease is substantial in terms of the number of players, but not in percentage. During the 2003-04 season, the NHL used a record number of 1018 players, and exactly 300 of them were from Europe, for a share of 29.5 percent. But since the 30 NHL teams only used 961 players in total during the last season, the percentage of Europeans has decreased by only 2.3 percent, down to 27.2 percent. There are several reasons for the decline: 1) Due to the salary cap, the NHL teams simply used fewer players than in previous year. 2) Several Europeans, who played in their home leagues during the 2004-05 NHL lockout decided to stay in Europe for the 2005-06. Sweden's Kenny Jonsson is just one example. 3) The fact that the Russian federation was not part of the IIHF-NHL transfer agreement immediately affected the NHL teams' keenness to sign Russian players. The number of Europeans in the NHL has been in a slow but steady decline since 2001. It went from 30.3 percent in 2001-02 to 29.7 percent in 2002-03, and from 29.5 in 2003-04 to 27.2 in 2005-06. The 261 Europeans in the NHL this past season were distributed as follows: Czech Republic 65, Russia 51, Sweden 46, Finland 39, Slovakia 32, Germany 8, Switzerland 4, Belarus 3, Austria 3, Latvia 3, Poland 2, Kazakhstan 2, and one each from France, Norway, Ukraine and Lithuania. The NHL team with the most Europeans was the New York Rangers with 16, followed by Montreal with 14 and Detroit with 13. The Rangers and Detroit also had the biggest single-nation contingents with 7 Czechs and 7 Swedes respectively. Dallas used 6 Finns. Out of 210 rookie players in the NHL in 2005-06, 46 were from Europe. |
