Well, like somebody wrote it's extremely tight between USA, Sweden, Russia and Finland right now (almost even) with the Chechs not that far behind.
This is indeed the best way to answer this question. In a sense, it does make Finland top-3 because as when in there is no way to make a difference in sports, they actually end up splitting the position and treat both recipients as perfectly equal medalists. Of course, there
are metrics to try and make that difference, but essentially all of them are subjective which will lead to nothing multi-page tug-of-wars.
I think we can all agree that Finland is somewhere in that 2-5 range and leave it at that. I said in that other thread however, that the question should be whether Finland gets the respect falling into said range merits. I can see why some Finns feel that they don't. Russia's only achievement from best-on-best is a silver from 1998. USA and Sweden have more failures than successes on their belts as well. The Finns are the most consistent performer on these tournaments, yet every time when one rolls around, there are people who treat them as if they're little leagues. Yeah yeah, teams' relative strength on paper and all that, but haven't we all had at least 20 years of time to adapt to the fact that things
never go according to the paper rankings? Such myopia could perhaps be funny if it wasn't so sad.
Then there's at least this one guy who seems to think that because Finland does not mail it in after losing the semi, they don't deserve said respect. What-the-effin-ef-in-the-land-of-efs is that train of thought? Of course the Finnish players want gold. They've wanted gold since they grabbed silver back in 1988. However, they also know that Finland is a country that's nuts about hockey, and that there's at least two million people back home tuning in whenever they play - no matter what is on the line. Actually, Finland's performance in the men's bronze game is not even the best example. Look at the
women's team. After losing the QF, they had two perfectly inconsequential placement matches left and the history sure as heck wouldn't judge them whether they finished 5th or 7th, but they turned those games into routs because they thought they
owe it to the fans. And that is, somehow, an attitude that merits disrespect?
As a matter of fact, I'm starting to think that these people who think "Gold or Bust" are not here to watch some hockey in the first place, but want to tune in for the eventual medal ceremony. After that, they can gather in the circle, pat each other in the back, howl at the moon how they're number one or whatever. Sure, it's a great feeling, but on the road to that point there's plenty of the game to be watched, full of emotion. I'm almost tempted to say that the people described in this paragraph
don't care about the game itself one little bit. Having something to boost their puny egos is their only incentive to call themselves fans of it.
