After reading all of those "if Canada could bring xx teams and they could win all the medals", I think it's fair to say that many of you thought that Canada was able to win it pretty easily.
But the reason why these top xx listings are so boring is that they are based mostly on opinions. I would like to see a listing of olympic records (best-on-best era) that also shows weight factor for different tournaments (based on the quality of the teams). But it means that you should be able to analyze different teams so precisely that it would take days.. Canada would be no 1 of course, but after them?? Sweden had pretty easy job in Torino. Quarters against Switzerland, semis against Czechs and finals against Finland. So as you can see, you can actually win olympic gold without playing against USA, Canada or Russia in elimination rounds.
We've had discussions like these in the HoH boards (my usual hangout). What constitutes best-on-best? Why doesn't the 2005 WHC count as best-on-best? What about the 1979 Challenge Cup? 1976 doesn't count because USSR was missing players X and Y, and so on....
Fact is that there are *always* going to be some key players missing. Going down that rabbit hole leads to nowhere useful. As a Canadian I'd love to be able to dismiss the 1996 WCH (no Bourque, Lemieux, Roy) or Nagano (no Lemieux, Sakic, Kariya) as irrelevant, but as a thoughtful human being, I know you can't do that and be honest with yourself.
We all know that these single-game elimination tournaments are usually won by the thinnest of margins, so any single tournament isn't always that useful for declaring hockey supremacy. The sample size is just too small. Only through looking at several tournaments can you start to see the trends. And when you do that, missing this player or that player starts to average out among the teams and isn't nearly the big deal you think it is regarding the Sochi tournament.
Regarding Canada's depth, we need to bring our best to win, but win we do, more often than anybody else (see previous point about 'trends'). I'm not usually part of the 'Canada should sent XX teams' crowd, and I know it does sound arrogant to say it, but fact is that there are enough quality players that on paper a Canada B-squad looks as good as just about any other national team.
Below is a proposed B-team from another thread, from the esteemed HFboards member 'Sidney the Kidney'. It does not include Steve Stamkos who was selected for Sochi but did not play, so he could be added. Tell me what other national team has a roster that is definitively better than this:
Taylor Hall - Claude Giroux - Tyler Seguin
Logan Couture - Joe Thornton - James Neal
Milan Lucic - Eric Staal - Andrew Ladd
Ryan O'Reilly - Jason Spezza - Jordan Eberle
Extras: Jordan Staal - Mike Richards
Defense:
Dion Phaneuf - Dan Boyle
Mark Giordano - Brent Seabrook
Brian Campbell - Dan Girardi
Extras: Francois Beauchemin - Marc Staal
Goalies:
Marc-Andre Fleury
Corey Crawford
Extra: Cam Ward
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And are you also saying that Canada lacks depth behind their brightest stars??(MacKinnon, Rielly and Monahan) This is the reason why I don't think that your depth is in a league of its own..
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