IIHF World Rankings

[WinTheRightGames]

Why does anyone care about the ranking? It's only used for seeding for international tournaments. It has nothing to do with which country is the best hockey country.

 

[llwyd]

I guess the only possible end to this story is if every single person outside of Canada posts in bold Canada are Number 1 and then follows up with an endless list of apologies for the the IIHF ranking even though they have nothing to do with it and probably couldn't care less about it.

Would this end the bragging and the complaining (even if they like already won)?? Would we get four years of more reasonable international hockey talk? Then let's do it!

 

[Mehar]

Too bad Finland and Swedes missed their best players in best of the best tournament.

So i guess losing Stamkos and Tavares does not matter for Canada then? Stamkos and Tavares are more talented than any of the players Finland and Sweden lost. Better believe that. Bottom line is the Swedes got dominated in the Gold Medal Game. Having Backstrom and Sedin there would not have changed the fate of Sweden. USA was fully healthy, and more talented than Sweden, and Canada shut them down as well. Maybe if Canada had a healthy Stamkos on the first line instead of Kunitz, Canada would have probably had won more convincingly. Enjoy your consolation prizes Finland and Sweden, and your IIHF Rankings. Enjoy your Rankings, while Canada enjoys the Gold Medal every best on best tournament (not the WHC but Olympics every four years).

 

[llwyd]

So i guess losing Stamkos and Tavares does not matter for Canada then? Stamkos and Tavares are more talented than any of the players Finland and Sweden lost.

My god, once again... The thing is that the replacements for our four top centres were much, much worse than Canadian replacements for Stamkos and Tavares. That's what having a more shallow depth means. It is simply an objective fact that top player losses are worse for countries that have very few top players. Understand now?

 

[Mehar]

My god, once again... The thing is that the replacements for our four top centres were much, much worse than Canadian replacements for Stamkos and Tavares. That's what having a more shallow depth means. It is simply an objective fact that top player losses are worse for countries that have very few top players. Understand now?

Your lack of depth is your problem, not Canada's. Who cares about Finland's lack of depth. I am talking about losing Stamkos and Tavares. Losing Stamkos and Tavares was a big blow regardless of the replacements.

 

[llwyd]

Your lack of depth is your problem, not Canada's. Who cares about Finland's lack of depth. I am talking about losing Stamkos and Tavares. Losing Stamkos and Tavares was a big blow regardless of the replacements.

Yeah, whatever. We could have offered you instead, hmm, Immonen and Kontiola - a deal?

 

[LaGu]

Would this end the bragging and the complaining (even if they like already won)?? Would we get four years of more reasonable international hockey talk? Then let's do it!

Seeing the continuation of this thread I think that the answer to that question is a sound no...

 

[Rob]

Why does anyone care about the ranking? It's only used for seeding for international tournaments. It has nothing to do with which country is the best hockey country.

Exactly. Too many of my fellow Canadians get uptight about it.

 

[Benttheknee]

There will probably be endless whining about it as usual, but people should realize that no judgement goes into it. It's just a mathematical formula used for seeding IIHF tournaments. If you don't give weight to the World Championships then just don't give weight to this ranking.

Exactly. It is context that is important. It is kind of like the UN. It is a nice concept that you can dress up, but the reality is far different.

 

[Ohashi_Jouzu*]

It could be argued that the Olympics should be given more weight, but other than that the ranking system is perfectly fine.

Not only should the Olympics should be given more weight, it's also completely arbitrary, not fine, that every team has the same 75%/50%/25% diminishing points scale regardless of how much roster overlap there is on each team, or how much "merit" there is to getting a medal vs. other teams with varying degrees of roster overlap from year to year (especially compared to Olympic rosters, which typically represent the "actual" strongest possible rosters for each participating country).

Put more simply, roster turnover and strength isn't linear (or the same, for that matter) over time for anyone, and yet the point system is linear for everyone. That's obviously a huge potential problem, contributing to the disconnect between what we see in the rankings and what we "know" about the relative strength/depth of each participating nation (particularly at the top).

 

[teris]

Why does anyone care about the ranking? It's only used for seeding for international tournaments. It has nothing to do with which country is the best hockey country.

Seriously people, this. It helps get more balanced groups in both the Olympics and the WHC, that's it for top countries. It has much more meaning to lower ranked countries who are competing for qualification to the Olympics. It doesn't have to be a complicated system but it's a better system than just going by the results of the last tournament.

 

[hammerwielder]

[QUOTE: How about this time, Canadians actually also act like they do not care and just not comment about it? Please?

Good point!

We don't care. It's the attempt to use the rankings by others to suggest that Canada is something less than the global hockey power that is seriously flawed and requires a response.

The IIHF rankings are largely meaningless as a reliable measure of the relative strength of the top six hockey countries. Any one of these countries is capable of defeating the others in an tournament where some teams field mostly second, third or fourth string players and others are able to field most of their top players. So although the WC is to me always an interesting tournament and I root for whoever Canada sends over there, it's meaningless as any objective measure of the relative strength of, say, Canadian and Russian hockey. Plus, in the case of Olympic years since 2002, none of the Olympic team players from Canada wanted to play. There shouldn't even be a WC in an Olympic year, it's a complete joke. Until 1972, there wasn't.

Another reality for Canada is that since the 2010 Olympics virtually no one who could make the national Olympic squad has accepted an invite to play in a WC. How could a WC ever compare to an Olympics for them? They're just not interested. The WC for Canada since then has become a tournament in which bubble players for a potential Olympic roster that are available by reason of having been eliminated from the playoffs go over in the hopes of securing a spot on the Olympic team through their participation or performance. That was certainly the case for Mike Smith, who was rewarded for his loyalty despite middling performances at the WC and a mediocre save percentage this season with a largely ceremonial roster spot on this year's team. Players like Spezza also went over seeking to enhance their Olympic team prospects, albeit unsuccessfully in his case.

Even if one regards the WC as some kind of reckoning of national hockey power in spite of these factors, and even despite Canadian players' relative disinterest in the WC at least since the 2010 Olympics, Canada has still been the dominant force in international hockey since the 2002 Olympics. Based on results from WC and Olympics since the Salt Lake City Olympics, and excluding as meaningless WC results in Olympic years, Canada has won 6 of the 13 tournaments (including three of the four Olympics) in that span. Russia, with the next highest number, has only half of that total and no Olympic win. Sweden has two, including one Olympics, while the Czechs and Finns have one non-Olympic win each. That is dominance by any conceivable measure. Again, I am not counting WC wins in Olympic years, as no one could seriously contend that they could count as any measure of program strength in a year in which the Olympics were held a few months earlier, and where hardly a single player from a gold-medal-winning Canadian Olympic team participated.

It is worth noting that in addition to the six wins in 13 years, Canada played for the gold medal in three more years, with the result that Canada has missed the gold medal game in only 4 of the last 13 years. That's dominance.

Let me throw out one more measure before I finish. Canadian players of course dominate the NHL with more than half of the scoring leaders in every category, more than half of the top rookies every year, first round picks, etc. But what about the other supposed top league, you say? Well, five of the top 14 scorers in the KHL this season were (no-name) Canadians, against only four Russians--in their own league. (The other five players were one Czech, one Slovak, one American and two Finns.) Three of the top six defencemen were Canadian, versus one Russian.

IIHF rankings or no IIHF rankings, there is simply no objective argument against Canadian hockey superiority at this point.

 

[jekoh]

Not only should the Olympics should be given more weight, it's also completely arbitrary, not fine, that every team has the same 75%/50%/25% diminishing points scale regardless of how much roster overlap there is on each team, or how much "merit" there is to getting a medal vs. other teams with varying degrees of roster overlap from year to year (especially compared to Olympic rosters, which typically represent the "actual" strongest possible rosters for each participating country).

Put more simply, roster turnover and strength isn't linear (or the same, for that matter) over time for anyone, and yet the point system is linear for everyone. That's obviously a huge potential problem, contributing to the disconnect between what we see in the rankings and what we "know" about the relative strength/depth of each participating nation (particularly at the top).

I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at.

At the worlds, roster strength is pretty close to being the same over time for everyone, and I don't know why you think turnover at the Worlds should make any difference whatsoever in the ranking. The diminishing point scale is simply meant to represent current form.

Some countries have more players decline the Worlds than other countries, but there is no reason for the IIHF to give bonus points to countries for having a lot of players decline.

 

[Rentsi]

[QUOTE: How about this time, Canadians actually also act like they do not care and just not comment about it? Please?

We don't care. It's the attempt to use the rankings by others to suggest that Canada is something less than the global hockey power that is seriously flawed and requires a response.

The IIHF rankings are largely meaningless as a reliable measure of the relative strength of the top six hockey countries. Any one of these countries is capable of defeating the others in an tournament where some teams field mostly second, third or fourth string players and others are able to field most of their top players. So although the WC is to me always an interesting tournament and I root for whoever Canada sends over there, it's meaningless as any objective measure of the relative strength of, say, Canadian and Russian hockey. Plus, in the case of Olympic years since 2002, none of the Olympic team players from Canada wanted to play. There shouldn't even be a WC in an Olympic year, it's a complete joke. Until 1972, there wasn't.

Another reality for Canada is that since the 2010 Olympics virtually no one who could make the national Olympic squad has accepted an invite to play in a WC. How could a WC ever compare to an Olympics for them? They're just not interested. The WC for Canada since then has become a tournament in which bubble players for a potential Olympic roster that are available by reason of having been eliminated from the playoffs go over in the hopes of securing a spot on the Olympic team through their participation or performance. That was certainly the case for Mike Smith, who was rewarded for his loyalty despite middling performances at the WC and a mediocre save percentage this season with a largely ceremonial roster spot on this year's team. Players like Spezza also went over seeking to enhance their Olympic team prospects, albeit unsuccessfully in his case.

Even if one regards the WC as some kind of reckoning of national hockey power in spite of these factors, and even despite Canadian players' relative disinterest in the WC at least since the 2010 Olympics, Canada has still been the dominant force in international hockey since the 2002 Olympics. Based on results from WC and Olympics since the Salt Lake City Olympics, and excluding as meaningless WC results in Olympic years, Canada has won 6 of the 13 tournaments (including three of the four Olympics) in that span. Russia, with the next highest number, has only half of that total and no Olympic win. Sweden has two, including one Olympics, while the Czechs and Finns have one non-Olympic win each. That is dominance by any conceivable measure. Again, I am not counting WC wins in Olympic years, as no one could seriously contend that they could count as any measure of program strength in a year in which the Olympics were held a few months earlier, and where hardly a single player from a gold-medal-winning Canadian Olympic team participated.

It is worth noting that in addition to the six wins in 13 years, Canada played for the gold medal in three more years, with the result that Canada has missed the gold medal game in only 4 of the last 13 years. That's dominance.

Let me throw out one more measure before I finish. Canadian players of course dominate the NHL with more than half of the scoring leaders in every category, more than half of the top rookies every year, first round picks, etc. But what about the other supposed top league, you say? Well, five of the top 14 scorers in the KHL this season were (no-name) Canadians, against only four Russians--in their own league. (The other five players were one Czech, one Slovak, one American and two Finns.) Three of the top six defencemen were Canadian, versus one Russian.

IIHF rankings or no IIHF rankings, there is simply no objective argument against Canadian hockey superiority at this point.

I think that Canada should easily dominate wc also. They are pretty much the only team that is able to form a team purely from nhl players and they have more stars than any other team in those tournaments usually. Other teams have players from AHL, SEL, FEL, KHL and other euro leagues.

 

[hammerwielder]

Selänne has never won whc gold. And he said after the bronze medal game that it's nicer to win a bronze than lose a gold medal game..

I think he might have meant Finland's WJHC gold..

And in the thrall of a blowout win for a bronze medal, of course he would say that; you lose the silver, win the bronze. But from any objective standpoint, making the gold medal game is a much preferable proposition at any time, as evidenced by his comment about Turin and the '04 WC.

 

[Ohashi_Jouzu*]

At the worlds, roster strength is pretty close to being the same over time for everyone

Stopped reading right there. That's so not true, particularly for Canadian and American teams (whose "true best" players either find themselves in the playoffs before/during/after the Worlds, or declining participation in favour of rest after the ~80-100 NHL games they have likely played between the season and playoffs), that it's a conversation non-starter.

"Bonus points" wouldn't be awarded just based on number of refusals, but could be based on tournament results in terms of the amount of roster overlap from one tournament to the next. After all, if a country is perceived to have sent a "B" team to the tournament (judged by some measure of roster overlap, or whatever), and still gets a medal, why wouldn't that be considered a positive sign of depth/strength of a nation "overall"?

I'm not even suggesting changing the system, though. Just pointing out the extreme limitations it has when judging the relative strength of countries who could send multiple different teams to a competition and be competitive vs those who might become increasingly less effective with even a "minor" level of roster substitution.

 

[hammerwielder]

[QUOTE: How about this time, Canadians actually also act like they do not care and just not comment about it? Please?


I think that Canada should easily dominate wc also. They are pretty much the only team that is able to form a team purely from nhl players and they have more stars than any other team in those tournaments usually. Other teams have players from AHL, SEL, FEL, KHL and other euro leagues.

I don't know about that. In last year's tournament, Canada beat the Swedes 3-0 as well as the Czechs and Slovaks only to lose to the Swedes in a shootout in the quarters. And that was with only two of its Olympic players, and fringe players at that (Duchene and Hamhuis) on its team. Sweden had six of its NHL Olympic players on its team. I agree that NHL players are the difference makers but every team at the WC has NHL players available and it is the quality of those players that matters.

Also, if you look at Canada and Sweden in last year's championships, boy, were those teams ever weak compared to their Olympic teams. Given that, I just don't understand how you can use the WC to gauge anything.

 

[jekoh]

Stopped reading right there. That's so not true, particularly for Canadian and American teams (whose "true best" players either find themselves in the playoffs before/during/after the Worlds, or declining participation in favour of rest after the ~80-100 NHL games they have likely played between the season and playoffs), that it's a conversation non-starter.

Canada is missing a lot of players, but they still have a team that is comparable in strength from one year to the next. Indeed their results show that.

"Bonus points" wouldn't be awarded just based on number of refusals, but could be based on tournament results in terms of the amount of roster overlap from one tournament to the next. After all, if a country is perceived to have sent a "B" team to the tournament (judged by some measure of roster overlap, or whatever), and still gets a medal, why wouldn't that be considered a positive sign of depth/strength of a nation "overall"?

Why would the ranking even need to try and measure "depth"?

The ranking is not "flawed", it's just that it does not represent what you think it does. It measures how teams have performed at the last previous championships. Nothing more, nothing less.

It's ludicrous to expect it to penalize teams that are able to get their A-team to the Worlds, when there's no evidence that country's B-team would do any worse.

 

[Rentsi]

I don't know about that. In last year's tournament, Canada beat the Swedes 3-0 as well as the Czechs and Slovaks only to lose to the Swedes in a shootout in the quarters. And that was with only two of its Olympic players, and fringe players at that (Duchene and Hamhuis) on its team. Sweden had six of its NHL Olympic players on its team. I agree that NHL players are the difference makers but every team at the WC has NHL players available and it is the quality of those players that matters.

Also, if you look at Canada and Sweden in last year's championships, boy, were those teams ever weak compared to their Olympic teams. Given that, I just don't understand how you can use the WC to gauge anything.

I have lost quite a many bets because I always think that they have the best team. And normally they do have the best team on paper but I don't know if it's the work ethic or what it is that makes the difference. Normally before the tournament begins, I rank Canada higher than they finally get.

 

[Ohashi_Jouzu*]

The ranking is not "flawed", it's just that it does not represent what you think it does. It measures how teams have performed at the last previous championships. Nothing more, nothing less.

Well, if you want to go to that length of reasoning, the ranking doesn't show you "how they performed". It tells you what medal they got. Nothing more, nothing less. I guess that's still useful on some level somewhere, but completely unrelated to where (in Canada's case, for example) an almost completely different roster should be seeded going into the next international competition.

If the past decades of WC weren't marred by the obvious scheduling conflict with the best players in the best league in the world, there probably wouldn't be quite as much of an issue, because enough "good" players could probably be rounded up to make it a moot point if it wasn't held in May, lol.

Or, we could just recognize Switzerland, Sweden, and Canada as the top 3 teams "right now", as they represent the only teams to play for a gold medal in international competition (WC + Olympics) over the past year.

 

[jekoh]

Well, if you want to go to that length of reasoning, the ranking doesn't show you "how they performed". It tells you what medal they got. Nothing more, nothing less.

No it does not tell me what medal they got, or even if they got any.

I guess that's still useful on some level somewhere, but completely unrelated to where (in Canada's case, for example) an almost completely different roster should be seeded going into the next international competition.

A roster is not seeded, a national team is. It's perfectly reasonable to use recent results to determine team seeding, certainly a lot more so than gambling on whether or not the roster will look any different.

And for all of Canada's turnover at the Worlds, the next team is still likely to perform exactly the same as the previous one. Not sure why seeding matters to top-6 teams anyway.

Or, we could just recognize Switzerland, Sweden, and Canada as the top 3 teams "right now", as they represent the only teams to play for a gold medal in international competition (WC + Olympics) over the past year.

I have no idea what point you ae trying to make here.

 

[hitmen19]

Thread was started by a Canadian

I guess the only possible end to this story is if every single person outside of Canada posts in bold Canada are Number 1 and then follows up with an endless list of apologies for the the IIHF ranking even though they have nothing to do with it and probably couldn't care less about it.

Apparently this needs to be repeated again and again.

Lastly, and it feels stupid just to have to point it out, the only ones who consider Sweden and Finland to be better than Canada in hockey right are just trying to stir up some controversy... That should be fairly obvious to everyone.

even as a Canadian and biggest fan, worrying about who is ranked number 1 in the iihf ranking is beyond mind blowing for me. why anybody cares is beyond me

So i guess losing Stamkos and Tavares does not matter for Canada then? Stamkos and Tavares are more talented than any of the players Finland and Sweden lost. Better believe that. Bottom line is the Swedes got dominated in the Gold Medal Game. Having Backstrom and Sedin there would not have changed the fate of Sweden. USA was fully healthy, and more talented than Sweden, and Canada shut them down as well. Maybe if Canada had a healthy Stamkos on the first line instead of Kunitz, Canada would have probably had won more convincingly. Enjoy your consolation prizes Finland and Sweden, and your IIHF Rankings. Enjoy your Rankings, while Canada enjoys the Gold Medal every best on best tournament (not the WHC but Olympics every four years).[/B]

again, not one person from Sweden or finland as said they are number 1. why does what the iihf use as a computer formulated rating get interpreted as one that the swedes and fins agree with

 

[tony d]

I do think these rankings mean something but also that the Olympics should mean more. Still it's pretty cool to see Mexico and Isreal moving up.

 

[icing]

I actually want to pose the question to the Swedes here - in your mind is Canada #1 or Sweden #1? Huge respect to Finland but I don't think any of them believe they are above Canada ATM (please feel free to correct if I am wrong).

Canada is the best hockey nation. But what has that to do with anything? How hard can it be to understand what this rank is about?

IIHF rankings are a bit flawed, but many Canadians way of reasoning here are even more flawed.

A legitimate ranking can't just be built on the general opinion that Canada is the best hockey nation, just because Canada is producing the best hockey players. A legitimate rankning can't be made up in a way so that Canada always is on top no matter what.

If IOC made their own ranking Canada would be on top. But this is not an IOC ranking. If canada does not care about the IIHF and their "silly little tournament" that is Canadas problem.

I agree that the Olympics could be weighed in more than the World Championships, that is a legitimate point. But still it is the same teams teeing off against each other and the same teams competing for medals in both tournaments. It is a ranking of teams, not rosters. It's not like in football/soccer where you don't have to play Argentina or Brazil in the Euro Championships.

And if NHL stops sending their players to the Olympics? Then both the WHC and OG would be "the same crap"?

 

[roto]

[mod]

Actually the IIHF ranking is much closer to reality than FIFA, FIVB or FIBA rankings, because you need to play in WHC or olympics to get ranking points and you don't get to those tournaments just because you are on a specific continent. In soccer you can get equally many ranking points by being 8th in European Championship than being 8th of teams in Oceania Championships, and everyone can understand what it means from ranking point of view.