| @bostnboy3 - Because football is a much bigger sport worldwide than ice hockey, the EPL has far more places to recruit their players from than the NHL. Hence only the very best Russians (Arshavin, Zhirkov, Pavlyuchenko) are playing in the EPL. The next tier of Russian players play either back in Russia (which has a very strong league itself) or in places like Germany. With ice hockey the top Russians are amongst the best in the world, and the NHL is by some way the best and most lucrative league in the world, so it makes sense that they play there. None of that makes any real difference to the popularity of the sports to spectators, though, so I'm not sure what your point is. |