USA have mostly send young teams to WC throught the years, even filled with juniors, NCAA players and AHLers. They seem to use WC as some sort of development tournament. If they took it more serious like Canada does, they would for sure have a couple of golds.
Couple of golds? If they sent their best team every year, they would have roster full of point-per-game scoring NHL players. They would be massive favourite every single year unless Canada had also their absolute top team. And even then it would be tight.
It would be nice if there was a "best-on-best" tournament every two years, alternating between the NHL's Bettman Cup that they could get their greedy hands all over, and the IIHF/IOC Winter Olympics to help spread the game globally. 1996, 1998, 2002, 2004, 2006 was sort of the golden age in that regard with 5 "best-on-best" competitions in under a decade (and you could arguably throw in the 2005 IIHF World Championship as that took place during the Lockout). But alas....
It was not a good day for us. But that was really an unfortunate quarter. It's been Canada Finland for awhile now.
Yes, I'm fed up with the NHL players except MiG and Armia. Players from Liiga, SHL and NL should fill the rest and play "honest", well organized, hard hockey again.
International hockey is an absolute layup and the NHL can’t figure it out and that’s beyond absurd. No best on best since 2014 is inexcusable. All they have to do is look at the World Baseball Classic that was a huge success this year and has grown and done so without the tradition and historic rivalries that international hockey has. Having a best on best every 2 years that alternates between North America and Europe would be incredible but no idea if that’s ever gonna happen
Yeah, there's no "Summit Series" or "Miracle on Ice" equivalent in baseball. Nothing historically prominent at the youth level, only became an Olympic sport in 1992 and it got nixed for 2024 (but will be back in 2028 with the olympics in Los Angeles, after that who knows)... and even with all that against it, the WBC was a smashing success and all anyone could talk about it for a bit was Ohtani vs. Trout to determine the Championship. Ice Hockey has a lot more advantages comparatively, it's embarrassing the NHL and IIHF can't put their heads together and figure it out.
You can toss that first game against Latvia out the window, it counts for nothing at this stage. Latvia will be jacked up for this game.
But not playing at home is a massive, massive disadvantage for this Latvian team. Plus Canada is in playoff mode, playing significantly better than they did in most of their group games. They started playing in playoff mode after the disastrous Norway game, and I think they will go all the way.
They will still have far more fans then us at the game................and it doesn't seem to take a lot of them to make a lot of noise, lol.
