EHM The Blue Line

Alessandro wrote:

nino33 wrote:There's a Hockey News article out with a headline of "Has the World Junior Championship 'Jumped the Shark'?" http://www.thehockeynews.com/news/artic ... -the-shark

The article notes "Prior to 1996, the WJC was an eight-team tournament that was played on a round-robin format, with the gold medal being won by the team that had the best record after seven games. That made every game meaningful"

While I'm OK with "playoffs too" (or without, though I think a top 3 or top 4 playoffs is good too), IMO the round robin system where everyone plays everyone once is the way to go for the elite tournaments

Hockey without playoffs is pornography

That's quite the word choice! TBL's filter is usually player names, so I'm assuming you actually wrote "pornography"

I've heard/read that many believe pornography "isn't a proper/fair representation" - is that what you meant?

Playoffs in international play are relatively modern...the old Soviet Union had all their hockey success in Olympics/Worlds that didn't have playoffs



TSN's coverage of the semifinal games are on YouTube, so I'm planning on watching them today (just started watching the USA/Russia game)

nino33 wrote: That's quite the word choice! TBL's filter is usually player names, so I'm assuming you actually wrote "pornography"

I've heard/read that many believe pornography "isn't a proper/fair representation" - is that what you meant?

I mean that it's an obscene thing

Alessandro wrote:

nino33 wrote: That's quite the word choice! TBL's filter is usually player names, so I'm assuming you actually wrote "pornography"

I've heard/read that many believe pornography "isn't a proper/fair representation" - is that what you meant?

I mean that it's an obscene thing

Ah! HaHa That makes total sense now!

nino33 wrote:the old Soviet Union had all their hockey success in Olympics/Worlds that didn't have playoffs

I don't think it would have mattered if there was playoffs or not when the Red machine dominated.

pr0n is not obscene! Well it depends I guess...

CJ wrote:

nino33 wrote:the old Soviet Union had all their hockey success in Olympics/Worlds that didn't have playoffs

I don't think it would have mattered if there was playoffs or not when the Red machine dominated.

They dominated Europe when many top Europeans weren't there (as they played in North America). In 1972 Czechoslovakia were the reigning "world champions" (had won the Worlds) when the Canada/Russia series occurred & again in 1976 Czechoslovakia won the Worlds and were the losing finalist in the first ever best-on-best tournament (Canada Cup), and then the Soviets lost to college kids in the 1980 Olympics. In Canada Cups they crushed Canada in 1981 but didn't win in 1976, 1984, 1987 and 1991 (and were only a finalist in 1 of the 4 they didn't win)

Both the Soviets (then) and Russia (now) produce some of the best elite offensive talent in the world & they win games sometimes by very large margins, but in "best-on-best" after Canada the Soviets/Russia haven't perform any better than the rest of the next level teams

Round robin is fair, but relatively boring.

nino33 wrote:and then the Soviets lost to college kids in the 1980 Olympics

Miracle with Kurt Russell:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0349825/?re ... lmg_act_15

Super great movie by the way!

nino33 wrote:Both the Soviets (then) and Russia (now) produce some of the best elite offensive talent in the world & they win games sometimes by very large margins, but in "best-on-best" after Canada the Soviets/Russia haven't perform any better than the rest of the next level teams

That's true. Sweden is a lot better these days in overall talent I'd say. Weak point is GK's, only Lundqvist and he's old. D-men might be the best in the world, only Canada comes close. Offence is great. Overall Sweden is way before the Russians these days.

Whelp, so that happened.

Team USA doesn't seem afraid of going for gold in the WJC's on Canadian soil, that's for sure. 2nd time since 2010. I'm very surprised USA did not miss DeBrincat. Things sure have changed since 2004 when USA won their first Gold on a flukey kind of play.

Next year's is in Buffalo, NY. In 2010 when USA won Gold in Saskatchewan, they went to Buffalo the next year as defending Gold medalists and only managed Bronze.

That was one hell of a game. Maybe it's just the Flyers, I don't know, but I haven't been glued to a TV like that in a long time. Even the referees... ... weren't trying to steal the show.