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Olympics: game thread - China vs USA

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AIexisLafreniereNYR said:
I LOVEEEEEEEEEE the development of USA hockey. These kids are developing to overtake Canada in the upcoming generation. These kids play with intense skill, pace. Love how much hockey has grown in America
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Lol beating china means they are going to overtake Canada. wooo HF boards. Connor Bedard... Heard of him.
 
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bert said:
Lol beating china means they are going to overtake Canada. wooo HF boards. Connor Bedard... Heard of him.
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Im speaking about the talent the Americans have. This generation of USA hockey is full of skilled young men. Just saying the competition has always been a step below Canada, but USA hockey is getting closer.

don’t get offended bud, didn’t mean to hurt feelings here :laugh:
 
Enjoy watching China! After these Olympics next time you are going to see China play against Canada or the USA in a toirnament will be... never.
 
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VLK said:
Enjoy watching China! After these Olympics next time you are going to see China play against Canada or the USA in a toirnament will be... never.
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That's a bold prediction. Should they continue to naturalize players, they would eventually be able to climb up to the elite World Championship. Of course, their participation numbers have also grown significantly so it's not exactly sure what is the state of their hockey in 15-20 years.
 
I don't know about anyone else, but i feel truly bad for the players in China's team. I'm not sure why they would agree to play for China, maybe they felt like they're khl jobs would be on the line? I'd feel physically sick if I was playing against my home country for China. It's insane to me.
 
Urbanskog said:
As expected, the by far the worst KHL team doesn't fare very well against international competition either despite some users predicting that their chemistry would allow them to keep things close or even win.
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I got into it with some guy on the Team China thread over the Norweigan team being better (when they were contemplating on replacing China with Norway), and he used this argument to no end.

Safe to say my point still stands. This bottom feeder KHL team got absolutely creamed by a US team full of NCAA players (amateurs). Norway is by no means a benchmark nation, but they'd undoubtedly be better than this China team.
 
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metalan2 said:
I don't know about anyone else, but i feel truly bad for the players in China's team. I'm not sure why they would agree to play for China, maybe they felt like they're khl jobs would be on the line? I'd feel physically sick if I was playing against my home country for China. It's insane to me.
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A few factors:

* $$$
* Didn't have to give up their citizenship
* Opportunity to play in the Olympics
 
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metalan2 said:
I don't know about anyone else, but i feel truly bad for the players in China's team. I'm not sure why they would agree to play for China, maybe they felt like they're khl jobs would be on the line? I'd feel physically sick if I was playing against my home country for China. It's insane to me.
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Had you been good enough to be picked up for your home country's national team, you would have been playing for your home country's national team. Apparently, that's not the case, and I can't fault an athlete who agrees to play for another national team and thus actually play in the Olympics.

Plus, a lot of athletes change countries and citizenships, that's not really a big deal. I am pretty sure Stan Mikita had no problem playing for Canada against Czechoslovakia. :)
 
Pasha71 said:
Had you been good enough to be picked up for your home country's national team, you would have been playing for your home country's national team. Apparently, that's not the case, and I can't fault an athlete who agrees to play for another national team and thus actually play in the Olympics.

Plus, a lot of athletes change countries and citizenships, that's not really a big deal. I am pretty sure Stan Mikita had no problem playing for Canada against Czechoslovakia. :)
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Stan Mikita grew up in Canada and played his hockey from early childhood on there. His parents came to Canada for legitimate reasons. He was touched in 72 by the fans response when Team Canada wrapped up their trip to Europe with a game against the Czech team.
 
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Canadian hockey players and coaches seeded just about every startup hockey program (except behind the Iron Curtain) in the world over the games history. It wasn't a real game if a Canadian team wasn't playing another country whose roster wasn't generously sprinkled with Canadians. Great Britain won an Olympic gold that way. Nothing has really changed. If hockey took off in China the results might surprise you.
 
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Puck Dogg said:
Jeremy Smith told in an interview to ESPN why he chose to sign for Kunlun and be a part of their Olympic team:

Inside the odd Olympic journey of China's men's hockey team
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Jeremy Smith spent some time in Milwaukee playing over 100 games. If you check his stats, in 2011-12, he had 21 PIMs and a 2.17 GAA in 56 games. The PIMs were from a game against Rockford. A player jumped him during a time out in period 2. He was about 20 feet in front of me. Smith was throwing punches back at Rob "Cement Head" Schick all the way to the corner. He was no Ray Emery, but he held his own. Don't be surprised if he plays relatively well in goal. He will keep the score to single digits. His NHL career was kind of limited by Pekka Rinne and Anders Lindback playing for Nashville.

Brandon Yip was also on that Nashville team in 2011-12, playing 25 games.

Victor Bartley was Smith's teammate in Milwaukee during that season with the "April Fools Day Brawl".
 
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Urbanskog said:
That's a bold prediction. Should they continue to naturalize players, they would eventually be able to climb up to the elite World Championship. Of course, their participation numbers have also grown significantly so it's not exactly sure what is the state of their hockey in 15-20 years.
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There is no Chinese hockey project beyond this tournament, at the World Championships they will again rely on the usual roster of Chinese-born players which is simply nowhere near good enough to establish itself at a higher level.
 
Albatros said:
There is no Chinese hockey project beyond this tournament, at the World Championships they will again rely on the usual roster of Chinese-born players which is simply nowhere near good enough to establish itself at a higher level.
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You know, I think that's why this team's mercenary player status bothers me more than South Korea's did at the laster winter games. At least most of those Korean import players lived in country for 5 or 6 years and represented them at multiple world championships.

Edit: Had to edit to finish post. Aparently my browsers keyboad doesn't like this website.
 
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There were rather strange narratives in women's hockey back then though. South Korea had built around a team of legionnaires much like China did now, and after the team was turned into a unified Korean roster there were articles in Western media about how these girls had worked so hard for their spot and now unfairly had to surrender their Olympic dream to North Koreans at the last moment. Well, none of these determined North American imports showed up for the World Championships a year later.

The men's team was nothing like that of course, and Matt Dalton in particular became a real dedicated ambassador to Korean hockey.
 
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metalan2 said:
I'd feel physically sick if I was playing against my home country for China. It's insane to me.
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Cyrus has a good video on Americans choosing to represent another nation.

These athletes had a choice, they have different journeys, and in a previous video he mentioned that over 180 olympics have represented a country they were not born in.

 
Eileen Gu is a good example of privileged Communist Party cadre offspring that got to grow up in freedom in America as the family needed a safe haven for the wealth they had amassed through corruption in China.
 
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Albatros said:
Eileen Gu is a good example of privileged Communist Party cadre offspring that got to grow up in freedom in America as the family needed a safe haven for the wealth they had amassed through corruption in China.
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That isn't her background at all as far as I can tell.
 
Rabid Ranger said:
That isn't her background at all as far as I can tell.
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Her grandmother Feng Guozhen is a now-retired Communist Party official who was responsible for structural reform at China's Ministry of Transport, a fairly lucrative position. Her daughter Gu Yan got pregnant in the United States and gave birth to Eileen in San Francisco which gave them an anchor baby with US citizenship. That then gave Feng and Gu access to the United States that they otherwise wouldn't have had as PRC citizens, it's an extremely common arrangement across the party ranks.
 
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Albatros said:
Eileen Gu is a good example of privileged Communist Party cadre offspring that got to grow up in freedom in America as the family needed a safe haven for the wealth they had amassed through corruption in China.
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LOL
 
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