A Melting Pot on Ice

The day after this year’s National Hockey League all-star game, a 10-year-old boy was walking through a busy airport when he spotted a dark-haired stranger shyly standing in line. The excited youngster ran over, stuck out his hand and said, “Good game, Sergei!” The man was Sergei Krivokrasov, who looked down, smiled and said, “Thanks, bud.” Both the American boy and the Russian hockey player then went to their separate gates and lives.

It was an unnoticed but significant marker of social progress in a world full of carefully chronicled ethnic conflicts and atrocities. The otherwise brightly lit world of professional sports is quietly becoming increasingly internationalized. Barely a decade after the Cold War, and even as street skirmishes and bombings occur in politically divided regions, millions of youngsters and adults are cheering for, even idolizing, athletes of different cultures, languages, backgrounds and races.

This week 16 NHL teams begin their two-month playoff championship quests, with Russians, Czechs, Swedes, Finns, Canadians, Americans, Germans, Slovaks, Lithuanians and a Swiss national playing together. This means the Stanley Cup, which traditionally accompanies every winning player to his hometown for a day, will be a very well-traveled trophy.

Last week a Japanese threw a no-hitter in major league baseball, where 16 foreign countries provide almost a quarter of the players. The same day a Chinese became the first Asian to sign in the National Basketball Assn., where 45 players from 28 countries now compete. It’s all a refreshing contrast with the sometimes strident nationalism of the Olympics.

Ironically, the misnamed National Hockey League is a leader in this internationalism. In 1968, about 97% of players--and a high percentage of fans--were Canadians. Today, barely 53% of the players are from Canada. Fifteen percent are Americans, and almost one-third are non-North Americans.

TV ratings are low in the States, but the NHL quietly distributes two to four televised games weekly to 170 countries for a potential audience of 250 million households. That’s a lot of potential cap sales.

The Internet offers ever greater potential. Already hockey lovers anywhere in the world can go to nhl.com and hear broadcasts of every NHL game. That’s good news for fans--especially the faraway family of a player named Sergei.