Okay, world-revolves-around-us-bloke, please consider this then: soccer.

Soccer (football) is fairly popular world-wide, and here in the UK it's probably the most broadly popular sport, so the biggest clubs have obscene amounts of money to throw around, and often do have players - some of the best - from all over the world, like Holland, Brazil, France, Italy (thankfully I have yet to hear of a british team with no British players). And we have a competition in which all (English?) teams can participate - the FA cup. We don't call it the world cup, because it isn't. And often few of the players do actually come from the vicinity of the club, much like your American teams, because of the way the transfer system works.

In case you hadn't guessed, there actually is a soccer (football) world cup. And teams from many of the countries of the world - even the USA sometimes - participate.

In order for any kind of competition to be considered to be "world", it must have participants (teams) representing as much of the world as possible (or feasible) - limiting it to one nation is ludicrous. After all, if the winner of your national hockey league was pitted against, say, the Russian national team, do you really have the arrogance to assume that the North American team would necessarily win?

I expect the use of the word "world" in USA national championships was originally conceived as a way to decieve USA citizens into thinking that the championship was of much greater significance than it was. But nowadays it is very much the USA stroking its own ego.

One more note, on the olympics: if I recall correctly, all participants must be amateur (at the sport they are playing) and actually be a citizen of the country they represent, which would necessarily disqualify all USA NHL (etc) players.