Is Finland a Top 3 Hockey Nation

  • Xenforo Cloud has upgraded us to version 2.3.6. Please report any issues you experience.
  • We are currently aware of "log in/security error" issues that are affecting some users. We apologize and ask for your patience as we try to get these issues fixed.
And I suggest you learn the difference between "some" and "most", and stop considering Finnish fans to be "neutral" when it comes to discussing Team Finland. We all know better. It doesn't get much more neutral than a non-European fan of a team that isn't affected by the ranking in any way putting an "order" to the European teams. And most still put at least Sweden ahead of Finland.

i cheer for my country but i am neutral when it becomes to ranking countries. few years ago i would rank us around 5th, but recent WJC gold and yet another olympicbronze added to other medals just elevates us higher. hell, i put Sweden ahead of us all the time. they simply are better. i can't deny that fact. neither should you deny the fact that Finland indeed is top 3 atleast for now :)
 
Ha, and its 52-52 now.

Yeah, I was going to make a 3rd option to filter out the Finn’s opinions, but I figured someone would complain about that so I just left it as is.

Well the best way to eliminate the appearance/impact of bias is to identify any group who clearly supports the team in question. No one is going to possibly be more biased in this poll than Finns, obviously. I think the amount that Canadian/American fans would be inclined to be biased against any of the European competition is way, way overstated.
 
If I was doing this by Power Rankings, I'd go:

1. Canada
2. USA
3. Sweden
4. Finland
5. Russia
6. Czech Republic
7. Switzerland
8. Slovakia

Before this tournament started, my only changes to this list would have been flipping Finland/Russia as well as Switzerland/Slovakia.
 
I totally believe you. :rolleyes:

bias is strong in you :nod: i admit that Swe/Can are much better than we are but Usa & Rus aren't. no statistical facts or recent achievements to proof otherwise. why don't you post some FEL attendace stats or salary stats in here. they seem to be missing from this thread. :naughty:
 
Sweden was the only country that was able to put a competitive team to wc, wjc and olympics so why can't they be considered no 1 at the moment? They lost many key players and was able to get silver anyway.
 
bias is strong in you :nod:

How? Because I don't agree with you and your countrymen? :laugh: Finland's ranking has no bearing at all on the status (perceived or otherwise) of Canada (now or ever) in the hockey world. If I thought Finland, as a "hockey country", was "stronger" than Sweden or the US (or even clearly stronger than Russia), there would be absolutely no reason or merit for me presenting any other opinion.
 
The Finns have had a good run in 2014, I think they are tight with Sweden and Russia for the 3-5 spots behind Canada and the USA overall. Would be nice to see all three (Sweden, Finland, Russia) invest in their women's programs.
 
Despite their implosion at the Olympics I'd still put the US in the top 3 before Finland. That being said Finland consistently develops world class talent and is a great hockey nation.
 
The Finns have had a good run in 2014, I think they are tight with Sweden and Russia for the 3-5 spots behind Canada and the USA overall. Would be nice to see all three (Sweden, Finland, Russia) invest in their women's programs.

IMO there's no point of investing that. In the end hockey is a sport for the spectators and at least in Finland the only ones who are spectating women's hockey are the boy/girlfriends and husbands of the players. No offence to any female players.
 
According to the IIHF, they are number 2 behind Sweden.

http://www.iihf.com/home-of-hockey/championships/world-ranking/mens-world-ranking/2014-ranking-feb.html

The only problem I see with these rankings are that the World Championships count for points.

My answer to the question is yes though. They're third until USA or Russia prove otherwise.

I don't think that is an actual problem with the rankings, sure the world championships aren't best on best, but at the same time the limitations are there for everyone and as a very small country Finland losing its key players to whatever reason, be it injury or because the said person is still playing the playoffs in NHL, it hurts us even more than it does when a country like Canada loses Tavares, Stamkos or literally anyone. That way those counting to the points is more than fair. The weighing of World Championships compared to Olympics however is another matter, that is borked.
 
Considering all the injuries they had, and they still got bronze I'd say so. Still think if rask would have played in the semis they would have been in the finals.

Yes it's unfortunate he was sick for that game and I agree Finland was playing a great team game similar to Canada and it would have been a much better gold medal game.
 
Imo, adding up tournament performances puts Russia clearly out of range of the top, but they still have the 3rd best talent pool out there. They're just under-performing.
 
I don't think that is an actual problem with the rankings, sure the world championships aren't best on best, but at the same time the limitations are there for everyone and as a very small country Finland losing its key players to whatever reason, be it injury or because the said person is still playing the playoffs in NHL, it hurts us even more than it does when a country like Canada loses Tavares, Stamkos or literally anyone. That way those counting to the points is more than fair. The weighing of World Championships compared to Olympics however is another matter, that is borked.

I agree that list makes no sense whatsoever.
 
I don't consider Finland as a top 3 hockey nation, but I think Finland has top 3 national team. With 5.3 million people it's hard to produce as many super star players as for example USA with 313 million people.
 
Canada (this team anyway) would probably beat Sweden, USA, Finland, or Russia 7 out of 10 times. The rest would probably spilt 50/50 amongst themselves.
 
Are we ranking them based on their teams performance?

Their countries production of hockey player?

What is the criteria for top hockey nations anyway? I imagine most of us have different views on what it means.
 
I don't consider Finland as a top 3 hockey nation, but I think Finland has top 3 national team. With 5.3 million people it's hard to produce as many super star players as for example USA with 313 million people.

At the same time, Canada produces almost twice as many NHLers as the US despite only 1/10th the population. It's obviously not a single variable, linear function.
 
I don't think that is an actual problem with the rankings, sure the world championships aren't best on best, but at the same time the limitations are there for everyone and as a very small country Finland losing its key players to whatever reason, be it injury or because the said person is still playing the playoffs in NHL, it hurts us even more than it does when a country like Canada loses Tavares, Stamkos or literally anyone. That way those counting to the points is more than fair. The weighing of World Championships compared to Olympics however is another matter, that is borked.

My concern isn't even that the best players don't go due to injury or because they're in the playoffs. It's the ones that don't go purely because they don't want to. The apathy can even be seen with the players on the ice who often play with even less compete level than when it was mathematically impossible for them to make the playoffs.
 
At the same time, Canada produces almost twice as many NHLers as the US despite only 1/10th the population. It's obviously not a single variable, linear function.

Yeah Canada has over 600000 registered players and USA has around 500000.
For example Sweden and Finland has only around 60000 registered players so USA really should be better than this.
 
My concern isn't even that the best players don't go due to injury or because they're in the playoffs. It's the ones that don't go purely because they don't want to. The apathy can even be seen with the players on the ice who often play with even less compete level than when it was mathematically impossible for them to make the playoffs.

Then why not choose players who really want to play there? There are plenty of awesome Canadian/USA players playing in the Europe. I bet they would love to play at their NT. Not to mention young AHL players that didn't make the playoffs.
 
My concern isn't even that the best players don't go due to injury or because they're in the playoffs. It's the ones that don't go purely because they don't want to. The apathy can even be seen with the players on the ice who often play with even less compete level than when it was mathematically impossible for them to make the playoffs.

I guess that can be an issue too, but I don't think that's the flaw of that ranking system or even the tournaments for that matter. If the player himself doesn't have enough spine to take any pride in being in his national team, who or what else can we blame other than that player?
 

Ad

Ad