GDT: May 4 • Latvia vs. Sweden

[Namejs]

Only 2-3 players from this team would make it into the olympic team. That's the case for most of the top nations during the WC. Still we manage to beat the bottom nations with 8-1, 6-1, 10-0 and so on. The gap between the best nations and the rest is big. If teams like Latvia are going to have a chance to win against Sweden they need a great amount of luck. Sweden didn't play well today and yet they won with 8-1...

We had a guy who played on an amateur team this season on the 1st line.

There is literally no depth in the Latvian hockey programme. Our leading players are solid, but if they're injured or busy in North America or whatever, we have to call up junior players or minor pro players from leagues like Italy, Denmark, etc. We even have a guy from the Hungarian league.

So the comparison with Sweden just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. We can't field 4 competitive teams like you can, because we simply don't have the resources.

This year for Latvia is exceptionally bad in terms of player selection, because most of our leading players are injured. That's a situation I don't remember being in over the last 20 years.

 

[kabidjan18]

A different coach, a different approach AND we're missing most of our leading players. And it shows.

While both teams are missing players, it hurts the teams which have less depth more, and that's not to say Latvia could beat sweden with it's best team, but a good example of that is Slovenia plus Anze Kopitar and minus Anze Kopitar. Even if they still lose, the level of play is totally different because you can't replace Jamie Benn with Wayne Simmonds.

 

[bDtKarlsson]

We had a guy who played on an amateur team this season on the 1st line.

There is literally no depth in the Latvian hockey programme. Our leading players are solid, but if they're injured or busy in North America or whatever, we have to call up junior players or minor pro players from leagues like Italy, Denmark, etc. We even have a guy from the Hungarian league.

So the comparison with Sweden just doesn't make any sense whatsoever. We can't field 4 competitive teams like you can, because we simply don't have the resources.

This year for Latvia is exceptionally bad in terms of player selection, because most of our leading players are injured. That's a situation I don't remember being in over the last 20 years.

Yeah obviously it's tougher for Latvia when they lose key players. It's the same for Sweden if you compare us to for example Canada. But better hockey nations have a larger amount of good players. It's quite simple.