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| 2014 Olympic hockey; men & women | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jan 2 2014, 12:35 AM (1,930 Views) | |
| hobbes | Feb 23 2014, 08:27 PM Post #76 |
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Apparently Martin St. Louis demanded a trade after initially being left off the Olympic team by his own general manager Steve Yzerman. Not sure if that has changed since St. Louis ended up going anyway. It helps explain why St. Louis went to replace Stamkos when Claude Giroux and Logan Couture were probably better choices. And it definitely explains why Yzerman quit his post as Hockey Canada GM before the closing ceremonies even started. Of course St. Louis looked like the 13th-best forward on the team all-tournament, but I'm sure he doesn't see it that way. I don't think you can be the GM of an NHL and the national team. It just doesn't work. Even when we were successful in the 80s doing it, you always had too many Oilers or too many Flyers or something and it worked out fine, but you look back and think: Doug Crossman? Really? Apparently "hardtotrashtalkSweden" was trending in Canada on twitter. Three of my faves: Hey @Sweden your international bestselling trilogy was an anti-corporate feminist manifesto #hardtotrashtalkSweden Hey @sweden - only 7 of the 8 Skarsgard siblings are attractive and talented! #hardtotrashtalkSweden Hey @sweden: you have high rates of gender equality and an your people are tall and good looking. #hardtotrashtalkSweden In some ways I think the final was anti-climactic. We *really* wanted to beat the U.S. We wanted to win the gold, but beating the Swedes doesn't quite stir up the same level of emotion. cheers, hobbes |
| Saskatchewan for the CPL: multis e gentibus vires | |
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| rosarino | Feb 23 2014, 09:07 PM Post #77 |
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#hardtotrashtalkSweden I guess it is hard to dislike Sweden. Well done to hobbes and his fellow Canadians on the title win. The Olympics are only once every 4 years if a professional team's GM is not running the national team is there enough competition to make it a full time job? Here is my question for those here, as a non hockey follower, cannational hockey teams be compared to their futbol/soccer equivalents? For example Canada is the dominant nation in the sport, are they the Brazil of the sport? Would the US be like my native country Argentina is in futbol, talented but lately just not quite good enough on the big stage? What would the soccer equivalents be of Sweden, Finland, Russia, Czech Republic's hockey teams be? |
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| hobbes | Feb 23 2014, 10:27 PM Post #78 |
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I always thought Canada was like England and the Soviets/Russians were like Brazil. But the way things are going of late we're probably more like Germany and the Russians are the Dutch (or pre-2008 Spain). If in the past the Soviets were Brazil, then Czechoslovakia was Argentina. At the moment I'm not sure there's a good fit for Sweden or Finland. The Finns are maybe like Uruguay? Talented, feisty, a little under-regarded, hard to beat. Sweden is sort of like Portugal or Italy with a little more stoicism and less ego. But still some flashy qualities to their game and they're there with the world's best every time out. There is the annual U20 tournament (which is incredibly important to us) and the annual world championships which happen during the Stanley Cup playoffs meaning no one really pays that much attention in Canada and our best players aren't usually there anyway. So there are tournaments to pick teams for and I think the general manager could and should function as a technical director and work on coaching curriculum and that sort of thing as well. cheers, hobbes |
| Saskatchewan for the CPL: multis e gentibus vires | |
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| shelsoccer | Feb 24 2014, 01:16 PM Post #79 |
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It's hard to dislike either Canadians or Swedes. How can you dislike any ethnic group that is hard working, polite and likes to drink beer? |
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| TonyDE | Feb 24 2014, 02:08 PM Post #80 |
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So true shelsoccer, so very true! ![]() Russia's hockey team seems to me that it is emulating its football team lately- full of talented players but better individually than they are as a collective and thus they often under achieve. Meanwhile Canada just seem to get it done. It took them awhile to get going but in the medal round I think we saw Canada's true strength as they shut out both the US and Sweden, and that is quite an extraordinary accomplishment. I don't share hobbes pessimism about future NHL participation in the Olympics but it is based more on a gut feeling than anything else. Olympic hockey without NHL players would be as interesting as the so called yearly world championships played without NHLers are, in other words practically none. The IOC, IIHF and NHL will reach an agreement, look it helps NHL too as it raises the level of interest in the game in North America, especially in the US. Olympic broadcasts of hockey is the best exposure NHL could possibly ask for. Here is an article explaining why so many are upset at Backstrom's last minute suspension, it looks like it was very poorly handled by the IOC and is completely at odds at what they did 4 years ago when another player tested positive, after like Backstrom, disclosing he was taking that specific allergy medication under doctor's approval. 4 years ago the player was not suspended, now Backstrom was pulled off the ice hours before playing in likely the most important match of his career. Shameful really. |
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| Sammy Maudlin | Feb 24 2014, 04:42 PM Post #81 |
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The Czech have I think fallen the farthest of the former Soviet era powers but even the Czech Republic were consistent title contenders, until recent Olympics. It was not long ago when I remember Dominik Hasek practically single handedly leading the Czech Republic to the Gold Medal. I don't have the experience of watching hockey as some here may have but I have never before seen such good goaltending as Hasek performed in that Olympics. |
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| hobbes | Feb 24 2014, 04:45 PM Post #82 |
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I'm not sure why I'm sharing this other than for its surreal qualities. A TV reporter in Florida called my Cory Wolfe to talk Olympic hockey last Friday. I think he just wanted someone from a random Canadian place and tourism Saskatoon set him up with Wolfe. The reporter makes it sound he just dialed a number, but before he went corporate Wolfe was one of the best hockey writers in the country and actually went to cover the Turin and Vancouver games. Which makes this whole exchange even more ridiculous. http://link.brightcove.com/services/player...d=3239300296001 I weep for this industry. Wolfe just finds it funny that he said "no doot aboot it" without meaning to. ![]() cheers, hobbes |
| Saskatchewan for the CPL: multis e gentibus vires | |
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| hobbes | Apr 3 2017, 12:20 PM Post #83 |
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And the NHL will not be going to the Pyongchang Olympics. And my interest in pro hockey goes down even more. cheers, hobbes |
| Saskatchewan for the CPL: multis e gentibus vires | |
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| raconteur | Apr 3 2017, 08:23 PM Post #84 |
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Bad decision. A very bad decision. NHL never loses an opportunity to lose an opportunity. |
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| Yogi | Apr 4 2017, 07:09 AM Post #85 |
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There goes my interest in the Winter Olympics. Not going to get me to tune in to see skeleton or some "bros" who drank too much Mountain Dew trying to do somersaults on their snowboards! Maybe the time the Winter Games will take place in Korea (middle of the night in most of North America) affected the decision but this is another lost opportunity as raconteur wrote for NHL, at least in the US, to get greater exposure. |
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| shelsoccer | Apr 4 2017, 03:06 PM Post #86 |
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Disappointing and interesting at the same time. FIFA has known the value of international competition in building a sport's brand for a long time. It also has had the muscle to impose changes to the competitive calendar that no other professional team sport can match. To a lesser degree, basketball has picked up on this as have rugby and cricket. The increasing popularity of the World Baseball Classic also indicates that sport is getting on board. Yet, here we have hockey going in the opposite direction. Perhaps, hockey is going to ramp up efforts to promote its world championship. Perhaps the international federation, the IOC and the national federations (e.g., Russia, Sweden, Finland, etc.) can exert some influence. However, this is a misguided power play by the NHL. |
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| ursus arctos | Apr 4 2017, 05:21 PM Post #87 |
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That is very unlikely to happen, as the NHL's beef with Worlds is essentially the same as with the Olympics. They don't generate revenue for the owners and interfere with their season/playoffs. An interesting aspect of this has been the extent to which younger North American stars have expressed disappointment. I isn't just the Euros any longer, and this will likely be one a real issue in future CBA discussions. |
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| hobbes | Apr 4 2017, 05:46 PM Post #88 |
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What the NHL wants is to make the World Cup of Hockey a cash cow. They made ~ $60M on the last one and it was a mess. They were giving tickets away to the day games, you could get tickets to the Canada-Europe final for 5-10% of face value and there were still thousands of empty seats. But it still got more attention and respect than it deserved. I don't know if anything would have made the NHL change their minds on skipping PyeongChang, but that didn't do it. What I really want is a significant player who has never played in the Olympics before to sit out half a season to play in the Olympics. That's unlikely to happen this time, but I have zero expectation of the NHL going to Beijing either. If Connor McDavid decided he was going to go play in Sweden for four months in 2022 that might change things fast. But I hope Ovechkin goes. I hope a bunch of decent players whose contracts are up stay away for a year. What I really hope is that the fans boycott the NHL while the Olympics are on. But they won't. You can mistreat an NHL fan as badly as you want and they will keep coming back. In half of the markets if you have a good team, the fans will come and if you don't they won't. In the other half of the markets, they'll basically show up no matter how bad you are, how often there are work stoppages.... I'm not surprised young players are disappointed. The 02 Olympic win was 15 years ago. For guys in their 20s that's one of the most iconic moments of their childhood. I'm sure the 2010 win is similar for guys like McDavid who are a little younger. The biggest sporting moment of their childhoods in any sport was an Olympic hockey win (I would almost guarantee). So I'm not surprised the Canadian guys have always wanted this. I know the Kings are playing a game in China next year (I don't remember if it's pre-season or regular season), so the NHL is trying to promote the NHL globally. They just want to screw over the IOC, the players and the fans to make a tiny bit more money. The NHLPA released a statement saying they were very disappointed and blaming the NHL solely. Which is all well and good, but doesn't change anything. cheers, hobbes |
| Saskatchewan for the CPL: multis e gentibus vires | |
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| ursus arctos | Apr 5 2017, 04:45 AM Post #89 |
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The Kings and Canucks are playing two pre-season games in China in September, as the NHL are trying to capitalize on the financial disaster that is Kunlun Red Star of the KHL. |
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| Sammy Maudlin | Apr 5 2017, 06:56 AM Post #90 |
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Maybe I have to start paying more attention to the KHL but I never knew there was a KHL team in Beijing before reading ursus' post. I thought the KHL was just restricted to teams from the ex Soviet Union. Apparently not. |
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