Welcome Guest [Log In] [Register]
Welcome to Soccer Futbol Forum. We hope you enjoy your visit.


You're currently viewing our forum as a guest. This means you are limited to certain areas of the board and there are some features you can't use. If you join our community, you'll be able to access member-only sections, and use many member-only features such as customizing your profile, sending personal messages, and voting in polls. Registration is simple, fast, and completely free.


Join our community!


If you're already a member please log in to your account to access all of our features:

Username:   Password:
Add Reply
2014 Olympic hockey; men & women
Topic Started: Jan 2 2014, 12:35 AM (1,931 Views)
americafutbol10
Member Avatar
Advanced Member
[ *  *  * ]
To say I'm bummed about the women's gold medal game is a major understatement :(

Especially, feel bad for Julie Chu...who's done so much for USA women's hockey & was playing in her fourth, and probably last, Olympics and ends up with 0 gold medals.

USA women played a great game...for 56 and a 1/2 minutes...before blowing a 2-0 lead. Even so, I truly believed there was NO WAY they would lose this game and, in the first two minutes of OT, came thisclose to winning the gold! To be that close to a gold medal & lose it, has to be gut-wrenching.

Ok, my picks for the men's semifinals on Friday:

Finland 3-2 Sweden

USA 3-1 Canada


I think the Finns are just too strong for the Swedes & think Tuukka Rask will out-duel Henrik Lundqvist.

USA have been on a roll & just can't see them being denied...though, I do suspect this will be very similar to the USA-Russia group game, won by the USA in a shootout, 3-2. I do think the one key player for the USA might be Patrick Kane, who hasn't played bad but hasn't been the impact player I thought he would be & hope he scores a goal or two! Payback...for 2002, 2010 & now, for the USA women...is going to be SWEET ;)
US Soccer...Don't Thread On Me!

Michigan Football...Harbaugh Effect (GO BLUE!)

LA Galaxy...5-time MLS Cup Champions!

Colombia...VIVA, Cafeteros!
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
hobbes
Advanced Member
[ *  *  * ]
I don't really know what to say about that women's final except that it was a great game nearly ruined by the officials.

The U.S. was the better team over the whole of the game, but Shannon Szabados is a really great goalie. She made a lot of huge saves early in the game and more in overtime.

I was never sure we were going to score, not because Vetter looked particularly sharp, but because we could never get anywhere near the front of the net or get a shooting lane. We got a real greasy goal and then things took a turn for the surreal. The linesman backed up into our defenceman at the blue line while the puck was coming to her. She coughed up the puck and the American shot it 170 feet off the post.

Seconds later we tied it when Marie-Philip Poulin somehow got open in front. She was a hero in Vancouver and has been very quiet in Sochi.

Then in OT things got even more bizarre. Canada was rightly called for a penalty when our defenceman buried an American at the side of the net in a scramble. Shortly thereafter one of the Lamoureux twins (Jocelyne I think) got called for a super lame slashing penalty after she slashed Szabados' pads after the whistle. Szabados gets hit harder by her teammates for encouragement, but the Lamoureux' have reputations, the Americans had been warned about poking at our goalie late and I think most importantly the ref was desperate for a chance to even if it up.

So we're playing 3-on-3. Which is barely hockey. Knight got called for hauling down Hayley Wickenheiser on a breakaway. There was two problems with this: one, Knight clipped her skate, so it was basically incidental contact and two, the ref had to award a penalty shot if she thought it was a penalty, but she didn't have the courage. I didn't think it was a penalty, but that was only after seeing the replay. Watching it live it absolutely looked like a trip.

And of course we scored on the power play. So I feel some sympathy for the Americans for losing on a bad call, but we got absolutely hosed in Salt Lake City by the officials and still won and the Americans were up two with three minutes left and couldn't close it out.

We may be the first country to put a goalpost on a postage stamp, but we're all pretty happy.

Deadspin said: "People spend their whole lives looking for something to love like Canadians love hockey." That felt really true today. They then showed a montage of Canadians freaking out after Poulin's OT winner, including Rob Ford bouncing up and down like a bunny and then throwing up a Judd Nelson, end of Breakfast Club fist. :)

Marie-Philip Poulin is now the first person to score the game-winning goal in back-to-back Olympics. She is 22.

I basically agree with AF10's calls. I'd say 2-1 Finns and 3-1 U.S. I hope I'm wrong.

cheers,
hobbes
Saskatchewan for the CPL: multis e gentibus vires
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
valenciano
Advanced Member
[ *  *  * ]
So Justin Bieber stays in the US?

I saw a billboard outside Chicago which said USA vs Canada, the loser keeps Bieber! :D

Congrats hobbes on your team's win.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
hobbes
Advanced Member
[ *  *  * ]
Thanks. :) And you get to keep the Biebs? Win-win!

Apparently there's a rush to get permits for bars to open at 5 a.m. Sunday. It's going to be a weird day up here. The Toronto Stock Exchange even ground to a crawl this afternoon apparently.

cheers,
hobbes
Saskatchewan for the CPL: multis e gentibus vires
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Yogi
Member Avatar
Advanced Member
[ *  *  * ]
valenciano,Feb 21 2014
12:48 PM
So Justin Bieber stays in the US?

I saw a billboard outside Chicago which said USA vs Canada, the loser keeps Bieber! :D

Congrats hobbes on your team's win.

Win-win for Canada, a lose-lose for the US! Well done to Canada on the win today (actually both wins in men's and women's hockey). Defense wins games as they say and Canada's D was superb, and Price was extraordinary in goal. Deserved win as Canada shut the US down. Quick did his job for the US but the vaunted attack was quieted and the better team won on the day.

On to play Sweden in the final after they beat Finland 3-1.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
raconteur
Advanced Member
[ *  *  * ]
Price was fine but it was the entire Canadian defense which erased the US attack and made it easier for Price. A close game as expected but much of that was due to Quick in the US goal. Canada were the better team and only Quick and US pluckiness I thought kept it close.

Sweden defeated Finland 2-1 not 3-1 Yogi. Another closely fought game won by the team which did just that little bit better. Erik Karlsson with the game winner and he has had a good tournament, no a very good tournament. Finland's hero of their win over Russia, goaltender Tuuka Rask was ill and did not play. His sub Lehtonen was not to blame for the defeat but you do wonder what the red hot Rask could have done if he was able to play. More stories have been written about Swedish stars injured and not playing than those who have been on the ice, and they are doing plenty of things right which is why thy are now in the gold medal game.

Should be a good final but I can not see Canada losing this.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
hobbes
Advanced Member
[ *  *  * ]
Finland rolled the U.S. today 5-0 to get bronze which was pretty predictable since the Finns always seem to medal at these things and North American teams tend to mail it in when playing for third-place.

Ken Campbell from The Hockey News started a minor shit storm by writing that the U.S. reinforced the opinion that their players are a bunch of pampered, entitled rich kids. The column is here: http://www.thehockeynews.com/blog/thn-in-s...onze-medal-game

He admits it's a sweeping generalization, but I think he brings up a real problem that spans nations: there aren't any lower or middle class kids playing hockey anymore. Anywhere.

It's one of the reasons that soccer is really starting to make inroads as far as drawing some of the best athletes in Canada (as basketball is as well).

It's been floated as a reason why the Russians struggle to succeed. I had a Russian player tell me that their U20 team wouldn't win the worlds because he wasn't sure they could find the rink if their mommies didn't drop them off in their BMWs first. Ouch.

But you could say the same for us. I don't know all of the current team's back story, but for the ones i do know they're almost all pretty privileged. Marleau is a farm kid, but I don't think they were hurting too bad. Carey Price is from a very poor indian reserve in northern B.C. (his mom was recently the chief of the Ulkatcho First Nation), but his dad bought a plane during Price's youth so he could fly him the 400 mile round trip to and from his games and practices. So I'm not sure how poor they were, even if it's a relatively poor area.

At the very least I'm glad the conversation is happening today because it's something I've noticed a lot. We may still be producing some really good high-end talent (and there's more remarkable players coming in the next few years), but talking to scouts I know the depth of talent is getting thinner every year.

I can't decide if I want to have a pint or two and watch in a bar at 5 a.m. tomorrow or just get up and drink coffee in my pyjamas from the couch.

cheers,
hobbes
Saskatchewan for the CPL: multis e gentibus vires
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Sammy Maudlin
Advanced Member
[ *  *  * ]
Ah so the bars got their 5 am permits then? I hope to catch the 2nd part of the match tomorrow a.m. Should be a good battle but like raconteur I see Canada getting the win.

Wow the US really did mail it on in the 3rd place match. Pretty disheartening display really but then again Finland are a good team and as Canada, Sweden and Russia all found out, they can make life difficult for any opponent.

Interesting about the socio-economic background of hockey players hobbes. I always had this image of most of Canada's players coming from farms in western Canada, Ontario and Quebec with just a few city kids mixed in. But as this week's games have shown it still captures Canada's collective heart. Plus I thought only crack and the Toronto Argonauts could get Rob Ford to celebrate like that! :D

Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
hobbes
Advanced Member
[ *  *  * ]
They're not going to let the bars serve in B.C. at 3 a.m. (not a bad idea IMO. We worry about Vancouver.), but Alberta and Saskatchewan are both serving starting at 5 a.m. They passed an exemption, so the bars didn't even have to apply. They can just open. I'm not sure about the rest of the country.

On the team I cover, there's four farm kids, five from small towns and a dozen from cities. And that is the most "country" team we've had in awhile. I won't pretend to guess the socioeconomic backgrounds for those guys. I know a few come from money, but generally I have no idea. Four years ago about 20 of the 24 guys came from cities that had at least 65-75,000 people and most of those were from places with 200,000-plus. And they're a small market team. They should be more appealing to small town guys and not a real draw for guys from big centres.

From the outside, the locations of where a lot of Canadian players come from might throw an American, but if you know the cities, then you realize that those places you've never heard of are all part of the urban sprawl of Toronto, Montreal, Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver or Halifax. Sillery, King City, Laval, Oakville, Brampton, Cole Harbour and Unionville (home to Bergeron, Pietrangelo, St. Louis, Tavares, Nash, Crosby and Stamkos respectively) are all suburbs.

Our lack of scoring generally makes me nervous, but nothing else about tomorrow's final worries me much. If we play well we should win. The Swedes will need to move the puck quickly and keep us off the forecheck. They have some excellent defencemen, but I'm not sure they're going to be able to do it. I was surprised how much trouble the Americans had moving the puck and relieving pressure. I would like a couple of relatively early goals to take the pressure off, but I expect it will be a close game.

P.S. a quarter of the country watched the end of the semifinal on a Friday afternoon. Not too shabby. I think we were close to half of the country watching some of the game.

cheers,
hobbes
Saskatchewan for the CPL: multis e gentibus vires
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
shelsoccer
Advanced Member
[ *  *  * ]
Like Sammy, I also thought the Canadian hockey players -- along with those from much of Europe -- were kids from working class families.

Now, I understand hockey is an expensive sport to play -- equipment, facilities, ice time, skates, travel, etc. I'm curious what is being done to try to bring the sport to less-advantaged.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Yogi
Member Avatar
Advanced Member
[ *  *  * ]
hobbes, any stories in Canada about this, Canadian officials for the gold medal game. Of the 4 refs for the title game, 3 are Canadians and 1 is born in the US but lives in Calgary! Peter Forsberg is not happy about it calling it an fucking joke but some Swedish NHL players are not concerned as they know the officiating crew from the NHL.

Quote:
 
The IIHF said in a statement that the officials have been evaluated throughout the tournament by Konstantin Komissarov (IIHF), Terry Gregson, former Head of Officiating for the National Hockey League, and six others (four IIHF, three NHL). The officials for the gold-medal game were chosen based on their performances in the medal round.


IIHF standards are certainly different from FIFA's. Wow, can you imagine a Spanish ref doing the last World Cup final?
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
hobbes
Advanced Member
[ *  *  * ]
It's pretty common actually. Most of the tournament has been one NHL ref and one IIHF ref, but there's little worry about where they're from.

They pick the best referees after the first round and start assigning them games. I think Sutherland and Meier got the call before the finalists were known (I don't think linesmen matter much, though the Finns did score on a rather baffling non-icing in the semifinal).

There was a bit made out of having a Canadian ref in the 02 final, but the US had the slight power play edge in that game as I recall. In 10 each team had three power plays. That's typically how these games big have gone at the Olympics — the calls end up very even no matter what.

I think most of the players (even the NHL Europeans) would rather have NHL refs that have a standard that will be consistent and they can understand rather than a IIHF ref that could be all over the map. You're seeing a lot less discrepancy between the calls international refs make versus the NHL, but it's still there.

The Swedish power play is pretty big for them, so it could be a big issue. I guess we'll see.

I prefer FIFA's system, but most of the top officials are from North America (maybe that's my bias, but I think the players would generally agree), so I would rather have the two best refs. We could have had two Americans do the semifinal and I wouldn't have cared (and honestly I have no idea who did the semi, I don't even remember). I just want good officiating.

Time to catch a few winks.

cheers,
hobbes
Saskatchewan for the CPL: multis e gentibus vires
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
Martin
Advanced Member
[ *  *  * ]
I suspect hobbes is either still celebrating or catching up on his sleep. The final was the only game I watched the majority of and it was a dominant performance by Canada. A 3-0 win and Sweden frankly were not ever close in this game. Canada just controlled it from start to finish, Sweden had a strong tournament but they were dominated in this game. Sweden were without one of their top players Niklas Backstrom as he reported tested positive for a banned substance in an allergy medication he took. I wonder if his absence took something out of Sweden because they played kind of like Brazil did in the 1998 World Cup Final against France when Ronaldo had his mystery illness and they just got blown out by an inspired France. This time and in this sport it was Canada who were inspired and they won the gold by shutting out both the US in the semis and Sweden in the final.

Oh Canada!

Enjoy the win hobbes.

I was looking at Wikipedia's list of the rosters and surprisingly (to me at least) Canada only has 4 players with Canada based NHL teams, Sweden had 3, Russia 4 and the US had 5 players who make their everyday living playing for Canadian clubs.
Club Sportivo Desamparados
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
shelsoccer
Advanced Member
[ *  *  * ]
I'll add my congratulations to Hobbes and the rest of our neighbors to the north.
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
hobbes
Advanced Member
[ *  *  * ]
shelsoccer,Feb 22 2014
07:13 PM
Like Sammy, I also thought the Canadian hockey players -- along with those from much of Europe -- were kids from working class families.

Now, I understand hockey is an expensive sport to play -- equipment, facilities, ice time, skates, travel, etc.  I'm curious what is being done to try to bring the sport to less-advantaged.

I'm pretty sure that's the common perception up here as well and it's certainly one we like to play up. Backyard rinks and moms in mini vans driving their kids to practices before dawn clutching a Tim Hortons. But the reality is more about exclusive three-on-three summer leagues and working out for personal trainers in private gyms when you're 15 and 16.

I don't know a lot of the back story on a lot of the Europeans we've had here recently, but our last three are all from Moscow (and they each told me that they live in the city and not in a suburban area) and two were definitely loaded. The one from last year spent part of his summer at a training facility in Arizona working out and working on his english. And he wasn't any good. Our last two Czechs were pretty wealthy. One was the son of a doctor and the other spent part of his summer visiting the European beaches with his girlfriend. The Dane we had for a couple of years was from a Copenhagen suburb that I can't spell.

I don't think anything is being done to bring the sport to the disadvantaged and what's more, I'm pretty sure Hockey Canada has zero interest in doing anything to fix that. I'm excited people were talking about it a little because it doesn't seem like anyone thinks this is a problem.

You can see why Hockey Canada doesn't care: right now we've won back-to-back Olympics in both genders and there is a steady stream of real elite players coming up (Duchesne, McKinnon, Aaron Ekblad, Connor McDavid, Tyler Benson, Sean Day and maybe Kale Clague). The model is still working and just as importantly the corporate world fights over itself to align itself with hockey and line the pockets of the powers that be. When you have eight year olds using a $200 stick and wearing $600 skates (or higher) you know the world has gone mad, but if you're Nike/Bauer or CCM (or Ford trying to market to people with that kind of money) then you're very, very happy with the status quo.

But I don't think this can sustain itself. I'm not sure you can be a world power in a sport if you're only developing a certain strata of the population. There are lots of programs to get underprivileged kids playing the game and involved and all those good things, but none of those guys will ever have a chance to go anywhere with the sport. It would be an incredible story if they did.

It's a real shame Backstom couldn't play. The Swedes were already missing Henrik Zetterberg and Henrik Sedin, their top two centres. Granted Nyquist bumped into the lineup and came the closest to scoring when he hit the post, but that's a lot of talent to lose and try to overcome.

This whole situation is fishy too. He tested positive after the quarterfinal on Wednesday and is pulled two hours before the final on Sunday? He was on the team sheet. That's how late he was pulled. It's a horrible way to lose your gold medal dream and I've always like Backstrom. I don't think anyone looks at this and thinks he was trying to gain any kind of advantage. I can only laugh at all of the guys huffing smelling salts on the bench, but a guy takes a allergy meds and he can't play.

The Swedish team doctor told Backstrom he could take one pill a day and be fine. It sounds like he was on the same drug for the last seven years to combat allergies that trigger migraines. And he played in Vancouver on the same meds.

Lubomir Visnovsky tested positive for pseudoephedrine, the same drug, in 2010, but he declared he was taking it when he was tested by doping control and wasn't punished the way Backstrom was.

This may fall into the category of things only I care about, but I think it's interesting that five of the Canadians (St. Louis, Sharp, Kunitz, Toews, Keith) played in the NCAA instead of playing Major Junior. Which is pretty unusual. Two of those guys (St. Louis and Kunitz weren't even drafted).

Martin> no celebrating and not much sleep yet. I was busy calling Sochi to try to talk to our bobsledder (he was in Saturday's crash).

I didn't think it was much of a final, but I may be so tired at this point it's hard to judge. I have no complaints about a comfortable win, but there wasn't a lot of drama in it. I was worried about our goal scoring into the tournament and that was pretty justified, but I never dreamed we'd give up three goals in six games. That's crazy.

I would bet massive sums of money that the NHL players won't be in South Korea in four years and I don't know what that will mean for the tournament. I'm guessing it would just be European-based players? It seemed like that was the way the wind was blowing, but with Tavares suffering a season-ending injury, Zetterberg getting hurt, the IOC pissing off the NHLPA with their handling of Backstrom today, the time change, etc… it really seems unlikely.

That should mean the World Cup returns, but the problem there is that the best players haven't felt like taking part in the last few editions. The 04 World Cup didn't resonate much and we won and 96 was big for the U.S. as they finally won a major title, but Canada were without Mario Lemieux, Ray Bourque, Patrick Roy or Paul Kariya. Three of those four were first-team NHL all-stars that season.

The Olympics are a special draw that most guys won't pass up, but the World Cup just doesn't have that cachet.

cheers,
hobbes
Saskatchewan for the CPL: multis e gentibus vires
Offline Profile Quote Post Goto Top
 
ZetaBoards - Free Forum Hosting
Enjoy forums? Start your own community for free.
Go to Next Page
« Previous Topic · Olympics · Next Topic »
Add Reply