By Daniel Costello

Canada may be hockey obsessed but that hasn't always meant the Canucks had the best hockey teams. A few years back, the National Hockey Leagues even created a fund to help struggling Canadian teams pay for better players.

Oh, how things have changed -- largely because of the falling U.S. dollar. The Canadian dollar has been rising relative to the greenback since 2002 and the N.H.L. pay contract states players must be paid in dollars.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2009/...d_the_nhl.html