Toggle sidebar

GDT: 2019 IIHF World Championships - Slovakia (Bratislava/Kosice) Part II: May 10th to 26th

  • Xenforo Cloud will be upgrading us to version 2.3.5 on March 3rd at 12 AM GMT. This version has increased stability and fixes several bugs. We expect downtime for the duration of the update. The admin team will continue to work on existing issues, templates and upgrade all necessary available addons to minimize impact of this new version. Click Here for Updates
  • We're expeting server maintenance on March 3rd starting at midnight, there may be downtime during the work.
eco's bones said:
Whatever the setting the Finns always play like a team. It's always like everyone knows what his role is.
Click to expand...

They did a lot of things really well, but their big advantage was they played a good ol fashion trapping style. The Finns is basically the only country that has kept doing that the last decade. And the Swiss of course. Remember that the Swiss has been to a couple of Finals too the last years. They almost beat Canada too.

Teams have had problem trapping in Club hockey. It just takes too much discipline to do it a full season and you get so little offense out of it now compared to the 90s and the redline offside was removed (98 in Europe and 05 in NA).

But a result is that teams aren’t that good at playing trapping teams anymore. They make the classic mistakes. You must step back a bit, never gamble,
 
  • Like
Reactions: egelband and eco's bones
BTW, if there ever is a reason for why people shouldn’t look at stats and metrics and stuff like that as the absolute truth, it’s this finish team. They shouldn’t even remotely be close. Like what one AHLer and one ECHLer and a bunch of Liiga players. And they beat extremely loaded rosters, one after the other. And they out play the opponents for big stretches.

Tactics matters. Attitude matters. Environment matters. Opportunities matters.

Another thing, strong hockey players has a heck of an impact in today’s game. It was the same with Vegas. So many teams has he over the hill guys, the younger players who are trying to find their way. Specialized offensive players who aren’t great overall, sometimes pretty weak despite being able to put up pts. If you against that put someone in his prime who skates well and works hard — and a team has 20 of those guys — and face a team that maybe have 10, with the rest being a mix of vets/rookies/specialist PP players and what not, it just had a big impact on a game over 60.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Kiekura, FinPanda, Legend Leinonen and 2 others
Ola said:
BTW, if there ever is a reason for why people shouldn’t look at stats and metrics and stuff like that as the absolute truth, it’s this finish team. They shouldn’t even remotely be close. Like what one AHLer and one ECHLer and a bunch of Liiga players. And they beat extremely loaded rosters, one after the other. And they out play the opponents for big stretches.

Tactics matters. Attitude matters. Environment matters. Opportunities matters.

Another thing, strong hockey players has a heck of an impact in today’s game. It was the same with Vegas. So many teams has he over the hill guys, the younger players who are trying to find their way. Specialized offensive players who aren’t great overall, sometimes pretty weak despite being able to put up pts. If you against that put someone in his prime who skates well and works hard — and a team has 20 of those guys — and face a team that maybe have 10, with the rest being a mix of vets/rookies/specialist PP players and what not, it just had a big impact on a game over 60.
Click to expand...

In a short, single elimination tournament, 100%

But lets be real, if Canada and Finland played a 7 game set, Finland probably isn't winning the series no matter what kind of tactics they use. Hard work and a cohesive effort is all well and good, but it's not going to do much for you over a prolonged period of time when the talent disparity is that drastic.

But you nailed it with your 2nd paragraph. Thats something that plagues Tampa.
 
  • Like
Reactions: egelband
ZuccsFluffierFluffer said:
In a short, single elimination tournament, 100%

But lets be real, if Canada and Finland played a 7 game set, Finland probably isn't winning the series no matter what kind of tactics they use. Hard work and a cohesive effort is all well and good, but it's not going to do much for you over a prolonged period of time when the talent disparity is that drastic.

But you nailed it with your 2nd paragraph. Thats something that plagues Tampa.
Click to expand...

Maybe, but this is exactly what everyone in Sweden said about the qualification round to the SHL. It was a single straight series. Everyone said that the SHL teams could lose one game against these teams, but never 7. Now they changed to 7 and the result was the opposite.
 
Ola said:
Maybe, but this is exactly what everyone in Sweden said about the qualification round to the SHL. It was a single straight series. Everyone said that the SHL teams could lose one game against these teams, but never 7. Now they changed to 7 and the result was the opposite.
Click to expand...

That's because Allsvenskan is much closer in terms of quality to the SHL than most people think.
 
ZuccsFluffierFluffer said:
But lets be real, if Canada and Finland played a 7 game set, Finland probably isn't winning the series no matter what kind of tactics they use. Hard work and a cohesive effort is all well and good, but it's not going to do much for you over a prolonged period of time when the talent disparity is that drastic.
Click to expand...

I agree with you, I really do. But I also thought that this finnish team would be lucky to make it out of group stage. And that Sweden would walk over them. And Russia. And Canada. None of those happened even though I was convinced each was far superior to us finns. Hell, of the three I thought Canada might be the easiest to beat based purely on the lineups.

In the NHL the team that wins the first game of a seven game series wins the series 69.7% of the time. If we make some wild assumptions and apply said number to these WC games we'll find that the likelihood of Finland winning "game 1" against Sweden, Russia and Canada yet still losing to all in a 7 game series is 2.8%. Now I know the numbers are approximates at best and the logic is funky but still, maybe I consistently underestimated this finnish team and maybe this wasn't all about random chance in a single elimination game. Just maybe.
 
  • Like
Reactions: sooni
ZuccsFluffierFluffer said:
In a short, single elimination tournament, 100%

But lets be real, if Canada and Finland played a 7 game set, Finland probably isn't winning the series no matter what kind of tactics they use. Hard work and a cohesive effort is all well and good, but it's not going to do much for you over a prolonged period of time when the talent disparity is that drastic.

But you nailed it with your 2nd paragraph. Thats something that plagues Tampa.
Click to expand...

:dunno:

I feel like if you took a poll of Tampa vs Columbus, People would say the same exact thing before that series started. Talent wise there is no team in the NHL on the same stratosphere as Tampa and yet they found a way to lose big.
 
  • Like
Reactions: KOVALEV022473 and Leetch3
Gardner McKay said:
:dunno:

I feel like if you took a poll of Tampa vs Columbus, People would say the same exact thing before that series started. Talent wise there is no team in the NHL on the same stratosphere as Tampa and yet they found a way to lose big.
Click to expand...

The talent gap between Columbus and Tampa wasn't nearly as large as the gap between Canada and Finland.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Ad

Upcoming events

Ad

Top Bottom