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Olympics: Olympic Pre-Qualification Round 3 (6-9 February 2020)

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Which three teams will advance to the final qualification round?

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This is the last cycle where Slovenia will be relevant.

It's really unclear to me which of the mid-minors are actually rising. GB has a (single) promising prospect. Japan allegedly has some interesting players. Estonia has some mildly interesting prospects, but that's what they are, mildly interesting. Liivik would be nice but he's only got maybe once cycle left in him. Erik Embrich would be the big pickup, it remains to be seen whether that is possible, but even he is only alright. Poland has two young players who might be somewhat interesting, but not that interesting. Hungary is in a bit of a drought. Slovenia had a good 99' and nothing else anywhere around. Lithuania is underrated, but they're so poorly rated that I'm not sure how much that actually says. There are no clear examples of Lithuanian players who look poised to carry the senior team in the near future and hold it up for years to come.

But I say all this kinda hoping to be corrected and introduced to prospects I didn't know, so...
 
It all depends on what your expectations for said countries are. If we take GB for example, they actually have quite a lot of good prospects that might prevent them from being relegated back to D1B. However, if you see them as a nation fighting for a place in elite (which they should never be, on merit), I agree they probably only have Kirk.

The way I see it:

Korea, unless they start naturalizing significant players again, are going to go down. Their stars players are old and there is literally nothing worth talking about in their prospects pool. Dalton is the only reason they are still up there at all.
Japan, when these guys grow up (Sato, Ando, Ueno, Hanzawa, etc.) are definitely going to go back to the level they have previously been in, for the most part. That is a team fighting for survival in 1A, mostly. So they are definitely on the rise but only in the sense, that their men's team is currently at an all-time low. Them being below such countries as Romania, Lithuania or Estonia is only going to last for a couple more years, at best.
Estonia took huge steps forward as it is, they turned from 1B/2A elevator nation into pretty solid one at 1B, with the young guys they are going to become a real threat for position to us (Lithuania) which they have never really been, yet. So again, they are at an all-time high as is but I don't see them climbing much higher.
We, Lithuania, should hang in where we have always been - a strong 1B nation. We desperately need some of our F prospects - be it Kaleinikovas, Grinius, Mazulis - to pan out. The common theme they all have been hit with major injuries so that's the suckiest part. I think if that didn't happen we would be in a pretty good position. We might still be somewhat of contenders to win it in 2021 (2020 is Poland's to take) but after that, Japan will firmly overtake us.
Hungary isn't going anywhere, their best players are all young and better than what Poland and the likes have but at the same time, they aren't leaping forward either. Unless they naturalize some more Canadians, then another promotion to the elite might be in the cards.
Same with Poland, they will remain tweener between 1A and 1B. They have solid youngsters (Lyszczarczyk, Pas, Jeziorski) but those guys can't really challenge the group like Sebok, Erdely and Hari. Once they are in 1B they are an instant favorite but any team in 1A can beat them. Although eventual Korean demise will free up one spot in 1A at some point.

1A is basically one huge clump of similar-strength teams as it is (if GB could get promoted from there anyone can) and the only thing that's going to change is some chairs will be moved around. Slovenia will lose power at the top of the division, Korea will be gone from there altogether, Poland and Japan will take its place.

The D1B is going to become a much more interesting place though. Estonia, Lithuania and Romania are pretty much even as it is, Korea will join them eventually and Ukrainians aren't going to be terrible forever, either.
 
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Hmmm, I don't like to think of the teams in terms of their WC division but their Olympic Qualification stage, because the first is 16-6-6, which makes much less sense for categorization than 8 (top tier) - 9 (mid-majors) - 9 (mid-minors). In that case I think the mid-minors (Slovenia, Japan, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Poland, Ukraine, Great Britain, Hungary, and Estonia), there's certainly deviation from top to bottom. A lot of those teams, however, could probably still challenge each other.

Slovenia is the strongest right now. Hungary will hit a window in a few years when the Slovenian golden generation begins to phase out where they're the strongest. But I think they'll just be good, not exceptionally good. They just don't seem to have a lot cooking in the department of interesting prospects. Maybe Papp, no one else is really showing at this point.

Lyszczarcyzk is doing really well in the ECHL, I suspect he is already or soon will be the level of Hungary's top players. I think Lewandowski could probably also become that level, but that will take 3-4 years. Pas is a wildcard for me. The federation has put a lot into making him look good, but he has to show it against some respectable competition. It's rough for Poland because they build around Chmielewski, who Hari's age but weaker. They also have Wronka, who has been a bit of a bust.

This tournament unfortunately doesn't seem to have a lot of huge matchup games. Great Britain vs. Hungary will be the big one. Poland vs. Kazakhstan might also be interesting if Kazakhstan wasn't so riddled with imports.
 
The divisional ranking system is based on teams playing each other, oftentimes at various levels. While this is an arbitrary ranking system based on, I assume, your personal opinion. I'm rather sure Kazakhstan has never played Estonia at any level, at least over the last 15 years. And likely won't play for at least another 10, so why would they be in the same group? I assume you "punished" Kazakhs for being riddled with imports but their U18s and U20s, with 0 imports, would destroy any number of countries easily. Why not go after Italy then whose U20s lose to Ukraine on a regular basis and get smoked by Poland 15-3?

Why does Romania not belong to any group, they have just won the division against Estonia and Poland? While Ukraine is, while they have to fight relegation at men's level every year, they even lost to the Netherlands last year? If it's based on what their U20 teams are, again, Kazakhs have played in the elite 2 years in a row.

More importantly, this isn't how it works organically. The focus of this ranking seems to be equally-sized groups rather than reality. Slovenia, GB, Kazakhstan and Hungary could all challenge "mid-majors", hell, Kazakhstan is beating them at every level on a regular basis so the line you draw between mid-majors and mid-minors is unrealistic, it's just not there. While, at the same time, to Lithuania or Estonia, most countries within our own tier are out of reach. How and at what level could we challenge Kazakhs or Hungary?

The realistic ranking should be decided by how many pro players (and of what level) does the country develop because ultimately that's what makes up the NT or at least the core of it, at lower levels. We could then quite clearly see there are teams that have semi-pro NTs (Romania, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, the Netherlands (although they are about to fall of the cliff altogether), Korea is getting there) and they really don't have the capacity to challenge countries above them, other than some single-game miracle (like how Romania got promoted last year). Then there are countries that do produce low-level pros their NTs are made off - Poland, Hungary, GB, Japan, Italy.. and there is really no clear cut-off line here. You could add Slovenia, Kazakhstan.. even Belarus, Norway and France to this group because there is a gradual climb in quality but until the team starts producing NHL-level talent (or at least close to it) somewhat consistently there is no hard line separating these countries. Because we could continue and say the gap between France and Austria isn't actually all that great either, and then Austria and Latvia, etc. Minor details come into play. In the end, we do see the gap between Poland and France as kinda huge at the men's level but the French U20 team just finished 2nd in the D1B, exact same place Poland finished 4 years in a row before.

So what's mid-majors and mid-minors everyone can decide for himself because realistically such groups hardly exist. Or if they do, to me, majors should be countries that have their players drafted to the NHL regularly, mid-majors should be ones that have fully professional national teams and mid-minors should be countries with semi-pro national teams. That's easily quantifiable and devoid of bias.

Regarding Poland, I think Wronka's example illustrates their main problem: they have a cushy local league and very few of their local guys push for being better. At the junior level they are pretty competitive but all those high-end (at the time) prospects of theirs - Wronka, Guzik, Starzynski, Kapica, Fraszko, even Pas and Jeziorski, they are pretty uninspiring players at the men's level. I definitely believe if some (more) of them packed their bag and went to play abroad they would have achieved more. It's not necessarily easy, Chmielewski had to spend 3 years in Trinec until he even got to the first team but in the end it was well worth it.
 
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SoundAndFury said:
The divisional ranking system is based on teams playing each other, oftentimes at various levels. While this is an arbitrary ranking system based on, I assume, your personal opinion. I'm rather sure Kazakhstan has never played Estonia at any level, at least over the last 15 years.
Click to expand...

Division 1 in China in 2007. Estonia - Kazahstan 1:2.
 
kabidjan18 said:
Hmmm, I don't like to think of the teams in terms of their WC division but their Olympic Qualification stage, because the first is 16-6-6, which makes much less sense for categorization than 8 (top tier) - 9 (mid-majors) - 9 (mid-minors). In that case I think the mid-minors (Slovenia, Japan, Lithuania, Kazakhstan, Poland, Ukraine, Great Britain, Hungary, and Estonia), there's certainly deviation from top to bottom. A lot of those teams, however, could probably still challenge each other.

Slovenia is the strongest right now. Hungary will hit a window in a few years when the Slovenian golden generation begins to phase out where they're the strongest. But I think they'll just be good, not exceptionally good. They just don't seem to have a lot cooking in the department of interesting prospects. Maybe Papp, no one else is really showing at this point.

Lyszczarcyzk is doing really well in the ECHL, I suspect he is already or soon will be the level of Hungary's top players. I think Lewandowski could probably also become that level, but that will take 3-4 years. Pas is a wildcard for me. The federation has put a lot into making him look good, but he has to show it against some respectable competition. It's rough for Poland because they build around Chmielewski, who Hari's age but weaker. They also have Wronka, who has been a bit of a bust.

This tournament unfortunately doesn't seem to have a lot of huge matchup games. Great Britain vs. Hungary will be the big one. Poland vs. Kazakhstan might also be interesting if Kazakhstan wasn't so riddled with imports.
Click to expand...

SoundAndFury said:
The divisional ranking system is based on teams playing each other, oftentimes at various levels. While this is an arbitrary ranking system based on, I assume, your personal opinion. I'm rather sure Kazakhstan has never played Estonia at any level, at least over the last 15 years. And likely won't play for at least another 10, so why would they be in the same group? I assume you "punished" Kazakhs for being riddled with imports but their U18s and U20s, with 0 imports, would destroy any number of countries easily. Why not go after Italy then whose U20s lose to Ukraine on a regular basis and get smoked by Poland 15-3?

Why does Romania not belong to any group, they have just won the division against Estonia and Poland? While Ukraine is, while they have to fight relegation at men's level every year, they even lost to the Netherlands last year? If it's based on what their U20 teams are, again, Kazakhs have played in the elite 2 years in a row.

More importantly, this isn't how it works organically. The focus of this ranking seems to be equally-sized groups rather than reality. Slovenia, GB, Kazakhstan and Hungary could all challenge "mid-majors", hell, Kazakhstan is beating them at every level on a regular basis so the line you draw between mid-majors and mid-minors is unrealistic, it's just not there. While, at the same time, to Lithuania or Estonia, most countries within our own tier are out of reach. How and at what level could we challenge Kazakhs or Hungary?

The realistic ranking should be decided by how many pro players (and of what level) does the country develop because ultimately that's what makes up the NT or at least the core of it, at lower levels. We could then quite clearly see there are teams that have semi-pro NTs (Romania, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine, the Netherlands (although they are about to fall of the cliff altogether), Korea is getting there) and they really don't have the capacity to challenge countries above them, other than some single-game miracle (like how Romania got promoted last year). Then there are countries that do produce low-level pros their NTs are made off - Poland, Hungary, GB, Japan, Italy.. and there is really no clear cut-off line here. You could add Slovenia, Kazakhstan.. even Belarus, Norway and France to this group because there is a gradual climb in quality but until the team starts producing NHL-level talent (or at least close to it) somewhat consistently there is no hard line separating these countries. Because we could continue and say the gap between France and Austria isn't actually all that great either, and then Austria and Latvia, etc. Minor details come into play. In the end, we do see the gap between Poland and France as kinda huge at the men's level but the French U20 team just finished 2nd in the D1B, exact same place Poland finished 4 years in a row before.

So what's mid-majors and mid-minors everyone can decide for himself because realistically such groups hardly exist. Or if they do, to me, majors should be countries that have their players drafted to the NHL regularly, mid-majors should be ones that have fully professional national teams and mid-minors should be countries with semi-pro national teams. That's easily quantifiable and devoid of bias.

Regarding Poland, I think Wronka's example illustrates their main problem: they have a cushy local league and very few of their local guys push for being better. At the junior level they are pretty competitive but all those high-end (at the time) prospects of theirs - Wronka, Guzik, Starzynski, Kapica, Fraszko, even Pas and Jeziorski, they are pretty uninspiring players at the men's level. I definitely believe if some (more) of them packed their bag and went to play abroad they would have achieved more. It's not necessarily easy, Chmielewski had to spend 3 years in Trinec until he even got to the first team but in the end it was well worth it.
Click to expand...
Lol. Really? Look at the thread you are in. Olympic pre-qualification round 3. You think I made up a classification, while posting in the exact thread I took the classification from. The IIHF's own Olympic qualification classifications. Nothing could be less made up by me. My goodness this cracks me up. And these Olympic qualification rounds are based off of IIHF rankings, so they are based off of the aggregation of years of WC tournaments, not just perhaps a single fluke tournament in which some team which normally isn't D1A gets promoted to D1A and we have to talk about them like they're a D1A team. I'm really having a good laugh haha. "Arbitrary ranking system" indeed. Tell that to the IIHF.

Kazakhstan was a mid-major in the past Olympic Cycle, as was Slovenia. And prior to that, they had been as well. So they obviously hadn't played Estonia. But as it were, if a couple games had shaken out slightly differently and the rankings between Ukraine and Estonia had been slightly altered, they would play them in this tournament. They're playing the 25th ranked team as opposed to the 26th ranked team...that doesn't change the tier they're playing in at this tournament.

How did I punish Kazakhstan? Did I hit them with a switch? The IIHF is the one that ranked them 19th, go argue with them.

Romania was part of Pre-qualification round 2.

Kazakhstan once was a mid-major, but that bears on nothing now. Junior results are irrelevant. Dawes hasn't played for them in a while, Bochenski, St. Pierre, Boyd, Dallman, all getting up there in age. Bochenski and Dallman aren't even playing this year, and Starchenko is getting up there as well, missed last year's WC too. They are ranked by the IIHF formula where they should be, for taking 3 tries to get back to elite, not by my "punishment."

Slovenia once could, and depending on the lineup, they still might be able to challenge some Final Group teams, but none of the other teams you mentioned are likely competitors... Again, in some previous cycle, they might have. Kazakhstan certainly did. But in this current aggregation of 4 years of achievements, and given the current state of the rosters, only Slovenia would be realistic. Of course, an 19th ranked Kazakhstan can still probably beat a 16th ranked Italy or a 17th ranked Korea. But would they be competitive against say Latvia? I'm tempted to say not in the slightest (watch them do it haha).

Well, Lithuania will have to play Slovenia this OCQ so I guess we'll find out if you can challenge that level right?
 
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So you took the ranking where China and Korea, nations whose junior teams can't even challenge Serbia, are above Kazakhstan and feel it's relevant? Woof. Well, at least you find it funny. Ok, it's not based on your opinion, it still has nothing in common with reality. You say junior results are irrelevant, to me your whole initial question (which countries are rising) ties mostly with junior results.

At least when we are talking about the nations whose hockey is rising internally. IIHF ranking is based on whoever naturalizes more Canadians. I think we can both see past that. There was a time when Croatia was well above us or Estonia in it as well.

I think we have already found out, we played Slovenia in the D1A WC in May and lost 9-0.
 
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SoundAndFury said:
So you took the ranking where China and Korea, nations whose junior teams can't even challenge Serbia, are above Kazakhstan and feel it's relevant? Woof. Well, at least you find it funny. Ok, it's not based on your opinion, it still has nothing in common with reality.

At least when we are talking about the nations whose hockey is rising internally. IIHF ranking is based on whoever naturalizes more Canadians. I think we can both see past that. There was a time when Croatia was well above us or Estonia in it as well.

I think we have already found out, we played Slovenia in the D1A WC in May and lost 9-0.
Click to expand...
China is ranked 32. They're not in the qualification process. That doesn't mean they're ranked "above" Kazakhstan (or following that logical train, Latvia as well). How you got that they're above Kazakhstan...reading error?

Kazakhstan can't really complain about other nations naturalizing Canadians. Lithuania makes a stronger case. I don't like naturalizing citizens, but it's hard to ignore them entirely, because those teams win championships, and then get promoted, and then beat other teams, and sometimes they even replenish aging legios with younger ones and repeat the cycle. When teams become so good, like Latvia, they are generally good enough to beat other teams who naturalize players despite the naturalization. But that's simply not the case for a lot of teams. Which doesn't downplay the importance still of internal development. Without internal development, there is not team.

That game was especially bad. But you did beat Korea and had decent games against Hungary, Kazakhstan and Belarus. If the right players keep developing properly, who knows? It's hard to say just because a team employs players from a semi-pro league that they're bad, because that's often merely dependent on the infrastructure that the country is able to amass. If Estonia and Lithuania and a few other Baltic states ever actually came through on that competitive Baltic league, then they would suddenly go from having semi-pro players to having pro players, but the shift would have been a shift in infrastructure, maybe not an increase in the skill level of the players themselves.

That league by the way, I'm still waiting for it to happen.
 
I mean it's not about complaining, it's just that they are the variable that makes by far the biggest impact at this level. Croatia and Korea are the greatest examples but GB or Hungary wouldn't have played in the elite without them either. Sure when the opposition gets as good as the players you can naturalize it starts to not matter but below the elite division, they make a key difference. Japan or especially China can turn themselves into "mid-majors" at any point in a couple of years if only they wish to so it's kinda pointless to talk about it.
 
SoundAndFury said:
There was a time when Croatia was well above us or Estonia in it as well.

.
Click to expand...


I don't think we were ever "well above" Lithuania (nor Estonia). Our first win against LTU came when we have had heavily imported (not so number wise, but quality) team in 2014. We beat Ltu 3:2 and that was our 9th official game against you and 10th overall (2007. EIHC - we lost 4:1). Next year we had like nine cronucks and naturalized players and won 4:1. In 2016. we only had three of those and game immediately went to SO (where we won). In 2017. despite having three cronucks you won 3:1 and in 2018. 3:0 (two cronucks). Before cronuck era Ltu was always enigma for Croatia and probably it will be in the future.
 
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