Kovalchuk is the Olympics MVP???
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Firsov99
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- Feb 17, 2006
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Sentinel
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Who was that guy who made Bobrovsky his bitch? Oh yeah, TJ Oshie. In other words: not a great memory to bring up
Sure. Gusev(OAR) is real MVP.
My All-Star Team :
Goaltender: Danny Aus Den Birkin (GER)
Defencemen: Maxim Noreau (CAN), Vyacheslav Voinov (OAR)
Forwards: Nikita Gusev (OAR), Dominik Kahun (GER), Eeli Tolvanen (FIN)
Sentinel
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Ryan Michaels
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- Mar 21, 2017
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Baxterman
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- Aug 27, 2017
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I didn't watch these Olympics but it is hard to imagine that it was more laughable than Selanne as the MVP in Sochi or the All-Star team that contained 1 Canadian after they absolutely dominated the tournament.
Definitely a far cry from previous such tournament MVP’s when few if any disagreed with the choices (Ryan Miller, Teemu Selanne, Niittymaki, Joe Sakic, Hasek).
Probably the lack of scoring explains Sochi. If you could have chosen one Canadian for MVP, maybe Shea Weber (only Canadian to crack top 10 in tourney scoring)
Baxterman
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Doughty had the exact stat line that Selanne had and shutdown every opposition player in the tourney.
Or Price who had a .52 gaa and .972 sv%.
Price quite frankly didn’t have to a ton of heavy lifting ala, say, Hasek ‘98.
With that defense and roster and big ice, any of the other Canadian goalies on Team Sochi- Luongo or Mike Smith-might have put up similar numbers.
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Baxterman
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Sure and any of the Canadian forwards could have joined Finland to replace Selanne and helped them lose to Canada.
jj cale
Registered User
As much as I liked Selanne he was a legacy pick which often happens at these things.
He was no tournament M.V.P and there were players that should have been picked over him.
It had thanks for the memories written all over it.
quoipourquoi
Goaltender
He was the leading scorer in the elimination round with 3 goals (2 GWGs) and an assist - the same reason Sakic took the MVP in 2002 despite also not being the top scorer overall.
Kovalchuk... not so much. His scoring was almost entirely in the preliminary round.
jj cale
Registered User
Nice but to pull just two names out of the hat Karlsson and Doughty were both far superior performers then selanne was that year.
Doughty was really the guy who got jobbed, he was the best overall player that year, he was I think off one point to Karlsson and played tremendous defense for the gold medal winning team, he was tremendous and the fact he did this for the gold medal winner should have made him the shoe in for M.V.P.
Selanne had a good tournament but it was easily a legacy pick, Doughty should have won it hands down.
Agreed about Kovalchuk though I am not sure what other player really stood out, he was an o.k pick I think considering the competition he had here for the award.
Why an earth would a player concern himself about his career when after doing well in the junior leagues he gets asked to in effect not experience first team hockey ? More Russian kids should ask themselves this. One of the major issues that the FHR needs to address is the loss of so many juniors who are not mature enough who jump over there and become lost. Telegin resurrected his career back in Russia and fortunately did not become one of the lost ones.
I guess he had quite a lot of injury problems that prevented a breakthrough in Winnipeg, the organization wanted him to take more time down in the minors and he lost his patience. Hard to say that either side would have been wrong, things weren't communicated well but that's the norm in the NHL.
On a different note how did Kovalchuk look these olympics? I didn’t see a lot of the olympics this year including the gold medal game, however I am excited to hear that he looks to be returning to the NHL next season. How has he aged? Does he still have the same skating explosiveness that he had in the NHL? Is his shot as lethal as ever? How many points to you think he could realistically score in the NHL?
He actually was pretty decent, it's just he played with grinders Andronov and Kalinin, so he couldn't score more. But 7 points and 5 goals in 6 games isn't bad.
While I think Gusev deserved to win the award, I think it would be fair to point out that Gusev, Datsyuk and Karpizov made up the best line in the tournament. That left Kovalchuk to create offense on a line that was made up of himself and 2 grinders who started on the fourth line. (He still tied for the tournament lead in goals)
