Congratulations to Sweden, who came out into the 3rd period behind 2-0, but with the clear attitude that "we are going to find a way to win," unlike Russia, who said, "we are going to find a way to lose!" Same old problem of being unable to clear the defensive zone - the problem that never gets any attention and never gets fixed. Time to fire Zybin and search for yet another new coach!
U18: Ivan Hlinka Memorial Cup 2017
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Congratulations to Sweden, who came out into the 3rd period behind 2-0, but with the clear attitude that "we are going to find a way to win," unlike Russia, who said, "we are going to find a way to lose!" Same old problem of being unable to clear the defensive zone - the problem that never gets any attention and never gets fixed. Time to fire Zybin and search for yet another new coach!
Olympic Gold does not derive its worth from a 3rd-rate league in a relatively minor sport. Just be sure to have your mop handy to handle the tear accumulation when the Russian flag is hoisted next February
You are the same guy that said Canada would struggle on the big ice in Sochi, and the Russians will be the one to wear the Olympic Gold Medals in 2014 (LOL). Russia has never won a best on best tournament, since the NHL first went to the Olympics in 1998. The only time they have a chance to win, is when Canada's best players are prevented from playing. However- Russia will find a way to probably lose again in 2018. If they win Gold, it is the equivalent to winning the Spengler Cup.
Are you sure I said those things? Can you link posts where I said that? I did think that Russia had a good chance to win in Sochi, provided that the coaching staff could bring disparate factions together and come up with a good game plan. They certainly played well enough to beat the United States, but lost a close game to an excellent Finnish team to get eliminated. But they were certainly capable of beating Canada on a night that they played well.
As I have said so many times before, of course Canada is going to win most hockey tournaments. The Canadian hockey program is much larger and more heavily resourced than the programs of Russia, Sweden, Finland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia combined. The fact that Canada doesn't win every tournament by a huge margin speaks to some real weaknesses in the Canadian program. Obviously, Canada has far more depth than anyone else, but they often seem to lack skilled players who skate well. I don't know how that is possible, but it seems to be true.
Is this really logic you use towards highlevel competitions? Why not to focus on your program? I guess most people are interested in reasons why Russia is not able to challenge Canada than if there are any gaps in probably best hockey program in the world. Your argument with the depth was valid in 1997. Its obvious that since then Canada Have made some progress.I guess we all witness it. By your logic, whats wrong with russian program when a least US and swedes look more succesfull and Finnland with 5,5 mil people is getting close to15-20 drafted players every year?
1Gold Standard
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- Jun 13, 2012
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I've never really given this tournament much attention or significance...
but if I'm vacationing in the B.C. interior next summer (which I often do) I may make the drive to Edmonton to catch a few Canada games. Edmonton's new arena is a gem.
Looking forward to the new season.
but if I'm vacationing in the B.C. interior next summer (which I often do) I may make the drive to Edmonton to catch a few Canada games. Edmonton's new arena is a gem.
Looking forward to the new season.
Isn't it obvious? Just look at the IIHF website for standards of measure. Assuming that the statistics are relatively accurate, look at the disparity between Russia and Canada in every phase of the game. Indoor rinks, 6 in Canada for every 1 rink in Russia. About the same disparity between the number of active hockey players in the system, with Canada dwarfing Russia in terms of players with access to trained, qualified coaches and top-class facilities. Every tiny village in Canada has a state of the art rink, while large cities in Siberia of more than 500,000 residents have maybe one or two rinks. If you add up all of the rinks and resources in Russia, Finland, Sweden, Czech Republic and Slovakia, you get about the same number as in Canada. If it was Team Europe, maybe it would be more of a fair fight.
Russia is doing very, very well when you consider how little resources are available to devote to the game. Money talks. I would like to see a return to a "program of excellence" kind of concept that existed in the Soviet era, but there is no interest in that at this time. Russian hockey has about the same resources to devote to hockey as Finland, and they certainly are competitive with Finland. Junior and minor leagues have been created and expanded, and progress is being made. That is the best that can be done for now.
AppsSyl
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- May 28, 2015
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Russia also has a population of 145,000,000 and Canada has a population of 36 million. Russia has x4 more people to draw from and develop. I would say that is quite an advantage.
kelsier
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- Aug 17, 2013
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Yet in the end, how many of those Russians can afford to buy equipment for their kids to even learn to play the game? Without really knowing how exactly things work there it probably comes down to good old $$.
Jenik scored the most goals. How much will it help him with the draft? I think he was unknown before tournament.
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Not if they don't have a rink to skate or a coach to teach them how to play the game.
jj cale
Registered User
Well maybe the passion for the game doesnt exist to the degree required in russia..
They would havemore rinks if they loved the game more.
JAS 39 Gripen
Registered User
And hockey isnt the most popular (amount of players) in Russia, and hockey has to compete with other, larger sports, football (soccer.....) for example. It's a failry poor dictatorship, except for a few really rich dudes, so many dosnt have the economy to play hockey either.
The number of rinks has nothing at all to do with lack of passion for the game, although it is true that Russia is far less passionate about it than Canada. The lack of rinks, coaches and infrastructure for the sport is a result of lack of money. Period. Modern hockey is all about money, which is why only rich countries excel. Regional and local Government in Russia lacks the money to build rinks, and individual citizens don't have the resources either. Canada lives in a universe by itself in the money and resources it devotes to hockey.
More and more now, kids are using outdoor rinks to play football on. I think hockey seems to be growing in popularity thanks to the KHL, but the competition with other sports is huge.
China has more than 1 300 000 000. Even so India. And where is their ice-hockey?
Finland has only 5.5 millions. And look, how many stars they have. And will have in future.
Slovenia. Only 2 millions people. For that amount, they could be happy, that they have achieved such ice-hockey level.
Excuses. Sure amount of rinks and hockey popularity play big role.But it is just only one of many aspects. When you could be best before you always can be again,especially when you have money, which you obviously have. Or maybe you just invest them to bad projects.
You know what is the biggest problem in Czech hockey? Averageness. There are so few people ready or willing to challenge the best and finding the way to challenge them. Exactly this excelence is missing. Its funny that most of the present russian and czech coaches mostly look like and behave like no name rednecks compare to czechoslovak and soviet coaches from iron curtain times. Isnt it funny that exactly these old guys were supposed to be these rednecks owning Volha and one small flat never seen anything from the world except hokey tours? Instead of it they were hockey world wide respected persons? Who are present czechs or russians?
There are money in hockey in both countries. People there are just not able or are not willing to be able to do something with it. They are average and they are satisfied. Poor soviet or czech profesors were able to built space programm or invented contact lens. Czechs and soviets were able to built hockey programms challenging Canadapretty much in isolation.
Right now there is KHL in Russia paying Kovalchuk, czech team is almost able to buy two KHL lines, and nothing works. Funny.
Not saying that I am comparing czech and russian program.
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I'm not at all sure what your argument is, but if you are saying that there is no excuse for Russians losing to the Czechs at any level, I agree with that! Actually, it rarely happens in recent years. The Russian loss to the Czechs in the Hlinka tournament is a rare exception to the relative domination of the Russians over Czechs and Slovaks. I attribute it to the passionate emotional "high" that the Czechs get in playing the hated Russians in front of a home crowd. My guess is that if the game was played somewhere else, the result would have been different. And as I predicted, the flame burned out very quickly against Canada, as it always seems to do.
I can't imagine what you are talking about when you discount the value of heavy investment of resources in every facet of professionalism by the Canadians by saying that the hard, long-term investment could be overcome by the eradication of "averageness" in the Czech program. There is no movement afoot to restore the Soviet-Czechoslovakian national team systems that created such great hockey, because those systems have died and could only be resuscitated by offering financial and other incentives that would persuade the best players to stay home and play for their country. This won't happen any time soon!
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I didnt spoke about czech playing against russians. I was pointing out, that your arguments why russians arent able to challenge Canada are wrong. You pointing out that Canada has more rinks,players and thus probably has more talent. Canada had been living from this entire 70s and 80s till they realized it was not enough in 98 and smaller sofisticated programms can challenge them. Therefore they dramatically changed its development program since 1999. I used czech example because I see some paralels with russian hockey, or with what you describe.
So despite Canada did a lot to be better (you still see some gaps, thats fine, but this is utter domination on int stage so far and its clearly result of hockey summit in 99), swedes adjusted, USA completely built its program and finns are getting better, czechs declined and russians also dont look they do something to get somewhere.
And there you say there are no money. So why you have ******** of money in KHL? I dont believe that. There is paralel with czechs because their hockey representatives just looking for arguments why it is not possible (like you do unfortunately) instead of looking how to challenge the best countries. Its ridiculous especially when czech hockey association invested more money to junior national teams than Finnland (and still have 2x less drafted players every year)! When we have money, are you sure you dont? (ok, to be completely fair, czech hockey fed found out resources only inlast 3-4 year, it was probably complete mess before).
Second thing is that these czechoslovak,soviets programms are not really done. US hockey copied it, even Mathias Sammer from Germany admitted that they studied it and used these systems in their soccer programms. It works.
I guess it was just a misunderstaning and we would normally found conclusion on some aspect which are wrong both in czech and russian hockey.
Again, averageness is just one of many aspects. But for sure you dont have to have that much money to bring up guys like Tarasov, Bukac etc. But are they in Russia or Czech Republic now?. Are there guys who really believe that they are on same level as Babcock? Because those old guys were certain that Bowman is not better than them. And I am sure this selfconfidence really helps to win. Yes, you need some money to bring up elites, but elites are made from creative open enviroment and not from investments. Its funny that when communists pushed on medals, there were tons of elite guys in CCCP and CSSR. Right now Russia is coached by Latvian who si good but not probably elite and there is probably only one person in CZ who is on top level.
So you saying Canada is ahead and should be even more. I dont agree for reasons above. Instead of it I am saying both czechs and russians could do much better and its not always related to money. ITs also about will, character, work ethic, open minded enviroment etc. though I agree lack of rinks is always issue, but thats not always main case.
I wasn't saying there is no money in the KHL. Obviously, there are some unbelievably rich billionaire oligarchs who own KHL franchises. But these oligarchs don't build rinks across Russia and hire and train coaches. They only invest in their own teams. I believe that Russia has the best hockey schools in the World, but there are only about 7 or 8 that are consistently productive.
Russia produces some unbelievably talented players, but not enough to match the depth that Canada produces. Only Crosby and McDavid probably qualify as superstars, but Canada has a legion of players that they can draw on that aren't great, but they are very good. Russia can't ice a roster of 22 absolutely top-flight players. And that doesn't even discuss the huge gap that Russia has in competent defensemen.
Russia still has a lot of people around who were a part of the Soviet phenomenon, and who could re-create it if called upon. But there is apparently no appetite for it at this time. One advantage the Soviets had is that the players were not free to relocate to Canada or the USA to play for big money in the NHL. Now they can, and so it would take a huge outlay of money and other incentives to keep the best home. I would love to see it, but I wouldn't hold my breath.
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Thats a bad topic for it, but what is the present or future goal of russian hockey association? I would like to know that because this is exactly what I am not sure in regards to czech hockey. In CZ somebody said medal from WHC, thats such a blury and low target that I am always mad when I hear it. Under these phrases you can just produce limited amount of lowcost NHLers and it will be enough. Noone clearly said we wanna chase Sweden, Russia, Finnland, just a ****ing medal from WHC...what does that even mean? That you compete with Slovakia or Switzerland?No one knows. Faded phrases.
What I liked most on that old times was that Canada wanted to be No1, Soviets chased them and wanted golds, czechoslovak tried to chase soviets and wanted medals, swedes and finns tried to reach top level. And everybody did their best to complete these targets.
Right now Canada keep working to confirm NO1, swedes probably did their best possible, finns are getting better and US is probably doing their best too.
And then its Russia whose game has been more organized recently but apart from that its pretty much same and not a big progress is visible.
Czech who made a lot of arrangements, even tried to built new stadiums, but they are simply not able to answer public questions about hockey program and they are not even able to react to criticism from highly respected people.
What is similar in russian and czech case is, that probably neither you nor me know anything about association planning steps. Czechs behave like schizoids not being able to clearly answer simple questions. Russians obviously dont bother that much too and are happy they are fifth country now. Isnt it just weird?
Even one year ago they feed fans with bull****s like, this is the ceiling, its a czech specific surrounding, deal with it. Then somebody more smart mentioned "hey, you have now more money in hockey than Finnland, so how come, its not possible?" And they opened another pile of *****, recognizing they have no coaches, no serious discussion venues, tons of it...hope this is not ahead of you guys.
For Russia, in the aftermath of Soviet times, all Russian sports have experienced a steep decline. In what sports does Russia regularly contend for world titles? Maybe Rythmic Gymnastics, unless China takes over! If Russia was doing great in other sports, then there might be a reason to conclude that the RHF is failing in its mission. And of course the RHF is failing to challenge for World titles, but they are no different than other sports federations, that are failing miserably as well. And the reason for failure is the same: lack of organization, facilities and funds to build a national apparatus.
What has Russia relied on to stay competitive in sport? Dope. The only option for Russia to be competitive in a wide range of sports is to compensate for the lack of preparation and development by doping. Dope helps to bridge the gap created by a complete inability to compete from an early age of development. Track and field meets featuring the USA-USSR used to be a big deal. Today, the USA absolutely blows Russia out of the water in that sport. The USA infrastructure in track and field is massive compared to Russia, which is tiny and disorganized. Russians don't use dope because they are genetically inferior. They dope because it is the only way to bridge the gap created by the lack of sports development for youth. (ironically, hockey is the only sport where doping really isn't a factor) The politicians still want the glory brought by medals.
Russia has made some structural changes in light of the introduction of the KHL and MHL, and expansion of VHL, but improvement is obviously going to take time, if there is any improvement at all. As a fan, I continue to support the team, but as a realist, I have to expect to compete mainly for Bronze in international tournaments.
Under the current system
jj cale
Registered User
jj cale
Registered User
Hey Yak?
I must say that Yakushev was the best Russian player I ever saw growing up.
Of all those Soviet players to me and many others he was the best, he used to scare the **** out of us.
An amazing player.
I must say that Yakushev was the best Russian player I ever saw growing up.
Of all those Soviet players to me and many others he was the best, he used to scare the **** out of us.
An amazing player.
Yeah, in terms of sprinting though I believe even even if doping it would not help win more medals and beat the likes of Justin Gatlin. For other events it would have more of an impact.
The two biggest doping nations are the United States and Russia. No one else comes close, but for different reasons. For Russia, it is an attempt to even the playing field to overcome the huge deficit in spending and investment in sport. For Americans, its an individual thing sometimes to edge out other Americans in order to collect advertising money and other sources of compensation.
