Toggle sidebar

WJC: 2022 IIHF WM U20 D1A in Hörsholm, Denmark ( december 12 - 18)

  • 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
What's up with the stats pages and game summaries on IIHF? Down all day for me at least.
 
Eye of Ra said:
If people think Latvia and Belarus have stronger teams, you are bascially saying that Belarus League and Latvian League are stronger than SHL and Norway League. Makes no sense.
Click to expand...
Agree on Latvian league (btw its strength is totally irrelevant to their junior programs) and SHL but... Saying that Belarus league is stronger than Norway league makes no sense? Wow. I wonder what makes you think so.
Norway is higher than Belarus in the CHL league ranking and the only reason is that no Belarusian clubs participated this season due to politics.
Rankings
Norway clubs have not played in the continental cup superfinal for years.
I'd say Norway and Belarus leagues are comparable, maybe one could find slight advantages of one of the them. But saying "makes no sense" should mean that those are different tier leagues which simply isn't true.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Pardus
Pan said:
I wonder what makes you think so.
Click to expand...
Bias :) Don't read into it too much. You are talking to someone who is dead set on the Polish league being better than Slovak one. Or that Sweden is a WJC relegation contender.
 
Personally I think the Belorussian league is better than the Norwegian one.

But regardless, the flaw with this discussion is so much more fundamental than that. There's a really oversimplistic view on these boards of "every skater's value is PPG * NHLe." Hockey is really really not that simple. Even in the NHL it's not that simple, GMs are realizing that simply putting together a team of really efficient corsis doesn't actually produce a good team. And that metric isn't a bad place to start, but it doesn't itself actually constitute a detailed analysis of matchups.

I heard on an NHL broadcast the other day and I agree that there are maybe 15 players in a league who drive play wherever they go, and everyone else is looking for a good club situation. There are a lot of different types of hockey players, there are offensive drivers, defensive forwards, space creating forwards, offensive defensemen, defensive defensemen, minute-eating defensemen, etc. Players can have a bad club situation which makes them look statistically worse than they are, they can have a favorable club situation which makes them look better than they are.

No one picked Kazakhstan to win 4 years ago. 3 years ago, Germany was the 2nd favorite behind Belarus. A lot of people, people here, were extremely confident that Belarus was significantly better and would win. No one picked Austria to win 2 years ago. Some of it is the variability of a short tournament, inevitably a small sample size. But a lot of it too is that there's just a lot that you don't know if you haven't actually seen these players. If the margins are large enough, maybe paper stats are adequate. Philip Granath will dominate D2A. Pretty obvious. But Philip Granath will dominate D1A? Just because he was a healthy scratch in 15 SHL games? That's more of a stretch.
 
Actually, 3 years ago most people seemed to agree Belarus and Germany have more or less equal chances. Except for that su24 guy who was hilarious but soon got banned.

Furthermore, I think most people who are active in these threads know fairly well NHLe type of thinking is just the roughest estimate. But that is the nature of the message board, people here want to talk hockey and go with the information they have at hand. And if there is someone around that knows the players better than stat-watching, well those people are always welcome to share their opinions. It's frankly ridiculous to expect someone to know how good Kazakh U18s are, for example. I don't think it stops us from talking about them.

Also, regarding the Austrian situation, let's not forget that the group of players (plus Rossi (!)) that won promotion to U20 elite didn't manage to win D1B of U18s, losing out to mighty Ukraine. So yes, from some point hockey is unpredictable and people don't have the crystal ball. There was no reasonable argument to be made Austria could ever win that.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: kabidjan18
kabidjan18 said:
Philip Granath will dominate D2A. Pretty obvious. But Philip Granath will dominate D1A? Just because he was a healthy scratch in 15 SHL games? That's more of a stretch.
Click to expand...
Philip Granath He has 6.13 avergae icetime over 15 games, so not exactly a healthy scratch. Rögle is a really good team as well. I think he could easily become one of the scoring leaders in DIV1A. Didn't check, but how many Belarusians has played more at a similar level other than Kosolov? Or how many in this tourney?
 
  • Like
Reactions: Eye of Ra
kabidjan18 said:
You say you're looking objectively. But are you actually looking? Or just looking at the club names on EP?
Click to expand...

Common sense suggests that a player doing good in SHL and Norway league should be better than players doing good in Latvian League and Belarus League. Thats not always the case, but in general it is. The reason is simple. SHL and Norway league are much better leagues than Latvian and Belarus Leagues.
 
Last edited:
Namejs said:
The only issue with your assessment is that you haven't actually made an assessment of the Latvian team and probably can't name a single player on it. What you have is a verbose post regarding the Norwegian team with no reference to anyone else.

Your post can't be objective if you have made no comparison to other teams. In fact, it's almost meaningless.

Especially considering that there are virtually no players playing in the Latvian league on our U20 squad, with the lone exception being Simanovics, who is one of the leading defensemen in the league and likely will be playing on the 3rd pairing or lower.

We have 12 players playing major junior hockey in North America, 1 NCAA, 6 guys from the same MHL team and our 4th line consists of a couple team-leading forwards playing for Lulea J20 in J20 Nationell.

Our defense includes guys like Hodass and Fenenko, both of whom are leading their teams in WHL and QMJHL in points among Ds.

So, with all due respect, Norway looks like the 3rd best team and that's while being a little cocky regarding Kazakhstan, which has 3 players with KHL caps and their entire team playing against grown men in the Kazakshstani league.
Click to expand...

How is playing against grow men in Kazaksthani league a bigger merit than playing against grow men in Norway League and SHL? Kazaksthani league is not even close to the level of those 2 leagues.
 
Eye of Ra said:
Common sense suggests that a player doing good in SHL and Norway league should be better than players doing good in Latvian League and Belarus League. Thats not always the case, but in general it is. The reason is simple. SHL and Norway league are much better leagues than Latvian and Belarus Leagues.
Click to expand...
Youre massively underrated the Belarusian league. And more importantly the Belarusian development system is way more advanced than Norways which is the big difference.
 
wingerdinger said:
Youre massively underrated the Belarusian league. And more importantly the Belarusian development system is way more advanced than Norways which is the big difference.
Click to expand...

Claming that Belarus devolpment systen is way more advanced than Swedens is not simple true. Its the other way around.
 
Eye of Ra said:
Claming that Belarus devolpment systen is way more advanced than Swedens is not simple true. Its the other way around.
Click to expand...
Where did I say Sweden? To equate the shl and Norway as if there remotely similar is incredible disingenuous.
 
Eye of Ra said:
Well, Lots of players on the Norway team is playing in Sweden or have played in Sweden.
Click to expand...
Vast majority still spent the majority of their development in the Norway system. And the ones in Sweden r undrafted 19 years old, midgets that dont inspire much imo.

Johnsen and wold being the exception.
 
wingerdinger said:
Vast majority still spent the majority of their development in the Norway system. And the ones in Sweden r undrafted 19 years old, midgets that dont inspire much imo.

Johnsen and wold being the exception.
Click to expand...

Tell me about all those big latvian and kazasthai players that are gonna get drafted.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Latest posts

Ad

Upcoming events

Ad

Top Bottom