WC: Quarterfinal Pre-Game Talk

[xxxx]

According to Hockey Canada, Burrows is expected to play tomorrow. It's not clear if he's going to play next to B.Schenn and Nathan MacKinnon though.

 

[glue]

Kind of nervous for this game...based on 4 straight years of QF exits...I just don't have my hopes up - particularly with the weak defensive play of this team. I also think Rinne is going to play out of his mind..so its gonna take some dirty goals to get it done.

Canada needs to play WAY better defensively then they have so far in the tournament..Finland will be opportunistic much like Norway was in their game vs Canada.

Lets hope the curse ends!

 

[cska78]

I expect France to put up a good fight tomorrow, and hopping Ovechkin rests missing this game.

 

[Yakushev72]

players are invited based on availability...that constitutes and invitational in my book...and you may call the World Cup whatever you want...makes no difference to me...

[mod]

I believe he is talking about teams entering the tournament, not the individual players who are or are not invited. In the Olympics, every team that meets qualifying criteria is invited, without any discretion exercised. With a World Cup, its up to the private owner of the tournament to decide who is or is not invited. Its totally discretionary.

 

[Yakushev72]

According to Hockey Canada, Burrows is expected to play tomorrow. It's not clear if he's going to play next to B.Schenn and Nathan MacKinnon though.

After the opening game loss to France, I posted that I thought that it was likely that Canada would make it all the way through to the Gold Medal game. I still think that is most likely.

 

[flaneur]

Just to summarize this thread thus far: with a few exceptions, every finnish poster is predicting canada to win and every canadian poster is predicting finland to win. haha. obviously both our countries fans have abundant faith in our teams this year

sadly, as a canadian i also fear that team canada may be heading towards another QF exit.

 

[xxxx]

After the opening game loss to France, I posted that I thought that it was likely that Canada would make it all the way through to the Gold Medal game. I still think that is most likely.

I wish! But it won't be easy. Can't wait for tomorrow. There's definitely something scary about the 4-year QF's drought....you may win almost everything in the round robin, but then it's all about one game. I hope and believe they're fully motivated and will play at 110% level. Will see tomorrow.

 

[OttawaRoughRiderFan*]

Quarterfinals

Day | Game | ET | CET
Thursday | USA vs. Czech Republic | 9:00 AM | 15:00
Thursday | Russia vs. France | 10:00 AM | 16:00
Thursday | Canada vs. Finland | 1:00 PM | 19:00
Thursday | Sweden vs. Belarus | 2:00 PM | 20:00

I hope to see a Czech, France, Belarus and Canada semi final. That would be wonderful.

 

[Loffer]

I hope to see a Czech, France, Belarus and Canada semi final. That would be wonderful.

LOL. Hope won't be enough to makew that happen. Only Canada will be there of those teams. At least I HOPE so since I put all my stakes on that.

 

[David Suzuki]

Czech
Canada
Russia
Belarus

 

[jkrdevil]

As an FYI it looks like NBC is streaming all four game live through their live extra app and live extra website.

 

[Uncle Rotter]

i don't think finland has ever eliminated canada before.

1992

 

[Keduzin]

Today will prove the fact that the B-pool this year was far better than the A-pool and all the B-pool teams will be in the semifinals

 

[Wireman]

1992

About time then.

Hoping for a russian choke against france. Would be hillarious to see frustrated russians if france are up a few goals at the end of third.

One can only dream. (Or...?)

 

[Urbanskog]

I hope to see a Czech, France, Belarus and Canada semi final. That would be wonderful.

Oh, I thought that you didn't care about this tournament.

 

[roto]

Really. Finland has been down right bad in this tournament. Barely eking out wins out of matchups they would normally coast through. And the reason they finished fourth and drew Canada? Momentary luck. Latvia was already having a firm grasp of the final seed, but somehow choked and failed to get the necessary points out of two relatively even matchups.

And if Canada fails to win? Well, you can be sure that there will be Finns who call 'em lousy. Because that's what they have to be if they ice a full NHL roster and somehow manage to lose to this bunch of scrubs.

We're not making this up. This year's Finland. Is. Bad.

Finland won four games and earned QF spot. It was not luck. Latvia won three. Latvia just got chance to play two games when Finland had no games left, so it seemed that Finland depended on Latvia. If Finland had played two games after Latvia had finished, would Finland's QF spot had been less lucky?

Yeah, Finland hasn't played well and if they continue like before, they have no chance today. Still they played well enough to win four games to make in QFs. With that material it's respectable that they won those games even without playing well. They have some potential, but I doubt if Westerlund can unleash it.

I don't see how Finland could have edge today. Canada has more talented players and they've played good tournament as team so far. Typically Finland has the team play edge, but based on last seven games, not today.

 

[FiLe]

Finland won four games and earned QF spot. It was not luck. Latvia won three. Latvia just got chance to play two games when Finland had no games left, so it seemed that Finland depended on Latvia. If Finland had played two games after Latvia had finished, would Finland's QF spot had been less lucky?

Knowing/Not Knowing what it takes to advance before the game can affect your whole approach to it. There's no guarantee whatsoever that the last two games would have gone the same had they been played the other way around.

So yeah, there was a luck factor involved. Brought mostly by the schedule and order of matchups, but it was there nevertheless. Besides, while going 4-3 is a decent record, there are several other teams in a group like this that can end at the same standing. And the only one that's not so dependent on luck is the one that possesses the necessary tiebreakers.

 

[OttawaRoughRiderFan*]

Oh, I thought that you didn't care about this tournament.

LOL! I will watch the playoffs. If Canada wins, wonderful. If not, so be it.

 

[roto]

Knowing/Not Knowing what it takes to advance before the game can affect your whole approach to it. There's no guarantee whatsoever that the last two games would have gone the same had they been played the other way around.

So yeah, there was a luck factor involved. Brought mostly by the schedule and order of matchups, but it was there nevertheless. Besides, while going 4-3 is a decent record, there are several other teams in a group like this that can end at the same standing. And the only one that's not so dependent on luck is the one that possesses the necessary tiebreakers.

I define 'luck' a bit differently. Latvia had to get 2 points from 2 games and it couldn't. I wouldn't call it luck. Latvia just wasn't good enough.

We might as well argue that Latvia was lucky to win the first game against Finland, and without that we might not be having this discussion at all. USA had luck in game against Finland when it get the first goal by lucky bounce. We don't know how the game would've ended without that goal. Latvia was unlucky when its tying goal was disallowed against Belarus. USA was unlucky to have a player like Abdelkader to ruin their QF game.

We'll maybe we can just agree to disagree, because I understand you view on this matter. I just think that Finland deserved the fourth place because others couldn't do better. If Finland had had better schedule (no 7 games in 10 days and all those back-to-back against rested opponents), Latvia might not had 2 games after Finland's last game and Finland might have performed a bit better.

 

[FiLe]

We'll maybe we can just agree to disagree, because I understand you view on this matter. I just think that Finland deserved the fourth place because others couldn't do better. If Finland had had better schedule (no 7 games in 10 days and all those back-to-back against rested opponents), Latvia might not had 2 games after Finland's last game and Finland might have performed a bit better.

And where did I say that Finland didn't deserve it?

All I pointed out was that Finland was down right bad throughout the group stage play and needed opportune results from other matchups to make it to the QF. However, they did deserve their slot by being the least bad out of many bad teams. But they still didn't show anything that should make the Canadians around here as worried as they are.

Looks like you fell into one of the most common mental errors associated with message boards: Jumping to conclusions.


Also, considering the schedule... Finland's two biggest fails were against Latvia and USA, and they sure weren't on the short end of the stick against either of them, given how the first was the very first game and they came to the second after an off day.

 

[roto]

And where did I say that Finland didn't deserve it?

All I pointed out was that Finland was down right bad throughout the group stage play and needed opportune results from other matchups to make it to the QF. However, they did deserve their slot by being the least bad out of many bad teams. But they still didn't show anything that should make the Canadians around here as worried as they are.

Looks like you fell into one of the most common mental errors associated with message boards: Jumping to conclusions.

You've never claimed that, and I've never claimed that you've written so. It seems you fell in that "conclusion pit" yourself. I wrote that in my opinion Finland deserved it, I don't know about what you think. You originally wrote that Finland had luck, and I responded to that (which I bolded too).

So it seems we agree that Finland deserved its place, but we disagree on 'luck' thing. Regarding jumping to conclusions, I'm at least not worse than you are.

 

[QnebO]

Finland won four games and earned QF spot. It was not luck. Latvia won three. Latvia just got chance to play two games when Finland had no games left, so it seemed that Finland depended on Latvia. If Finland had played two games after Latvia had finished, would Finland's QF spot had been less lucky?.

This. I would like to use tamis pharse "Ei kannata keskustella". Who wins more games / earns more points, deserves to move on in the tournament. We are the ones who collected our points. We didin't do it with most secure style this year, but it doesn't really Maatta.