Of course, he was a member of the team. I was merely making the point that it is hard to say that the US is better than Russia based on recent matches in Senior and Junior levels. Winning a game in the 13th round of a Shootout certainly qualifies as a victory, but it by no means demonstrates that the United States was a better team. Also, the Russians have beaten the US recently in the WHC and WJC, so overall, nothing to distinguish themselves over the Russians.
Canada's Golden Era
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Of course, he was a member of the team. I was merely making the point that it is hard to say that the US is better than Russia based on recent matches in Senior and Junior levels. Winning a game in the 13th round of a Shootout certainly qualifies as a victory, but it by no means demonstrates that the United States was a better team. Also, the Russians have beaten the US recently in the WHC and WJC, so overall, nothing to distinguish themselves over the Russians.
The US has a 5W-2L-1T record against Russia in Best on Best games, I'd say that actually distinguishes them pretty well.
Canada and the USSR were close in this period when the Canadian teams had little or no experience playing together. If Canada put the same effort into their national program it wouldn't have been even remotely close, but it also wouldn't have been any fun.
Actually I would say there is pretty strong evidence that Russia's player talent peak was around 2009-2010. They certainly will have a good enough roster to win a short tournament like the Olympics, but it looks highly unlikely that they will be better on paper in 2018 than they were previously. The KHL is going to help grow the popularity of hockey in Russia but 2018 is too early to really see an impact at the elite level. In the short term the KHL will actually likely hurt the development of Russia's top players. Teams like Medvescak and the North Americans playing in the KHL show pretty clearly that the KHL is an AHL level league and this means those Russians who choose to play there over the NHL will not have the benefit of playing with and against high calibre players, which will hurt, not help their development. With time the KHL will improve but it is going to be a while before it is anywhere close to the NHL level.
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It still would have been close, the Soviets were too good for it not to have been.
Would Canada have won a decent amount more of those games it lost to them? sure, but the competition between them would have still been very close.
I'm thinking a 60-40 split in games in Canadas favour.
Toward Canada or compared to the 2014 and previous teams?
I see Canada dominating, Ekblad/Reinhart/Bennett/ are the #1-3s in this draft, next year McDavid #1, the year after that it looks like Benson/Day as the #1-2. The next 3 years we can clearly see the top talent being Canadian players obviously they might turn out to be nothing but being future #1 overall picks they are looking like future stars. Canada is producing better talent than the rest of the world IMO.
Russia has more depth than Canada?
Mackinnon has been dominating so far and he's only 19, so...
The Soviets were so good because they effectively had a full time national team program, with even their domestic league controlled for the benefit of that program. Canada's best on best tournament record against the USSR was already a 60-40 split in favour of Canada and I don't think anyone would deny that Canada's national team would have been way, way better if they practiced and played together as much as the Soviets did.
JackSlater
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The Canadian players had less experience playing together, but almost all meaningful games in that era were played with referees that the Soviet players would be mostly unfamiliar with and on an ice surface they were unaccustomed to. Those Soviet teams were stronger than any competition that Canada faces today, and Canada isn't a lock to win tournaments today, so they cannot be written off so simply.
True that the rules, style of officiating and ice size all were in Canada's favour, but none of them come even close to the advantage that familiarity and the experience of playing and practicing together provide. If you think about how long it can take one player to fit in with a new NHL club you see that the 2-3 weeks the Canadians had to gel a completely new team and coaches is practically nothing in terms of time. Effectively executing systems and strategies is a huge part of hockey at the elite / pro level and that takes a lot of time to perfect so I think it is only reasonable to assume that those Canadian teams would have been much much better if they had more time together.
JackSlater
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I do think that they would have been much better, but that does not mean that the Soviets were not still great. Considering Olympic competition would have been played on the larger ice surface and with IIHF referees, it's hard to say just how much better Canada would have been. I can't imagine them being so much better as to leave USSR as anything but a very big competitor.
Compared to the 2006, 2010 and 2014 teams. Maybe better than the 2002 Russian team. I'm definitely not saying that they will be better than Canada. I would obviously have no reasonable basis to make such a prediction. What I am saying is that major changes in the Russian hockey infrastructure are likely to produce a larger volume of players of the caliber of Ovechkin, Malkin, Datsyuk and Radulov. Russia has suffered from a lack of volume of top level players because of the absence of infrastructure to produce them.
Its hard not to look at the future through the prism of the past, so its hard to believe that Canada's Olympic streak won't last forever. I would just conjure up the memory of former Toronto Globe and Mail columnist Dick Beddoes, who, prior to the 1972 series, made the prophetic comment that "Canada will win all 8 games by a margin of at least 10 goals." You can look it up! He wasn't kidding, and he certainly wasn't alone in expecting a team of NHL All-Stars to just absolutely crush the poor hapless novices.
After all, how many goals could Vic Hadfield or Dick Redmond score in 8 games against rank amateurs? 40? 70? They would walk through them as if they weren't there. And it was thought to be very likely that the Soviets would be shut out for all 8 games. These were the prevailing thoughts, and there was no one in North America who was disputing them. It just goes to prove that sometimes the imagination can get away from you.
I was trying to figure out the 5 wins you are referring to, and then I realized that the term "Best on best" is whatever you say it is. I can define it in my World, and you in yours. In the Olympics since 1998, which seems far enough in the rear view mirror to focus, it seems that the US won in 2002, the Russians won in 2006, and the US won this year in the 13th round of a Shootout. Its just dishonest by anyone's standards to say "I'd say that actually distinguishes them pretty well."
No one buys that premise other than you. If the NHL brass bought it, they would have had the Montreal Canadiens, and not the NHL All-Stars, play against the Soviets in the Challenge Cup. If playing together for part of the year was a decisive factor, Canada never would have won any games at all during the Soviet years. Its a false premise designed to prevent giving the Soviets any credit for what they accomplished.
They were great, but that is also a relative term. The ice size is a much bigger factor if you are unfamiliar with it, a hypothetical Canadian national team would have practiced and played enough on the big ice to really make it a non-factor. Good players will adjust, it just takes time.
I was referring to the seven tournaments widely attended by the world's best players since Russia became a country, nothing dishonest about it.(96WCup,98OG,02OG,04WCup,06OG,10OG,14OG)
Canada won because their superior individual talent overcame the Soviets team preparation and we had better players because we had way more people participating in the sport. Just because not everybody realized it in the 1970's doesn't mean it's not true.
JackSlater
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I do think that ice size is overused as a factor, but it's still something that would work against Canada. It would help if Canada was sending legitimate teams to World Championship tournaments in addition to Olympic games in this hypothetical. It wouldn't have made a difference for the early decades of Olympic hockey, but it would be a factor later. Not necessary crippling or anything, but a factor.
The 72 Summit Series is just one example but it did show how the Canadians could get better as they got more familiar with each other, even when having to convert to the bigger ice. Ice size adjustment is a much bigger factor in short tournaments than it is in the long run.
VMBM
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This is simply rubbish. Apparently it was not a very good training camp, he he... but that's another story.
Yep, that's one example. Then there are other kinds of examples:
1974 Summit Series (WHA's Canada started very well, and was even unlucky not to have led the series after the 4 games in Canada; however, USSR was the better team in the last 4 games in Soviet Union)
1979 Challenge Cup (Team NHL won the 1st game deservedly, but were pretty much outclassed in the last 90 minutes of the Series; it wasn't looking like they were getting any better. Hard for me to see a total reversal, even if it had been an 8-game series)
1981 Canada Cup (7-3 over USSR in the round-robin, 1-8 loss in the final; they did not get better that time either, although I wish that the final had been played best-of-3, so we would be a bit wiser)
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JackSlater
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Of course they could get better as they got more familiar, I'm not doubting that. The sample size is very small though. It's impossible to know what factor (familiarity, reffing style, ice size) is most significant, particularly for specific teams, but each are factors and I don't think that eliminating any one factor can allow us to say that Canada would steamroll USSR (or Czechoslovakia) once they had developed as a hockey nation.
In 72 the Canadian training camp started on Aug 13th and it took until game 6 of the series (Sept 24th) for Canada to really get going. That tournament was spread out over 27 days (47 if you count from when our training camp started). By comparison the Challenge Cup was played over 4 days and I think the NHL had maybe one practice the day before the tournament started, so in this context the two tournaments are not comparable whatsoever. Even the `81 CCup was over a much shorter time period and 79 I don`t know much about other than it was a team of the top Canadians from the WHA which isn`t really relevant in terms of best on best.
All we can really say is that the Team Canada`s would have been significantly better than the ones who won the 72 Summit Series and four of the five CCups.
JackSlater
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Possibly. The Canada Cup teams had roughly the same familiarity as Canada would have from participating in Olympic hockey, and in Olympic hockey it would have been under IIHF rules and on the larger ice surface.
Canada would most likely still be better on the small ice, but certainly would be greatly improved on either ice surface with more team training and experience.
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