WC Gold Medal GDT: Czech Republic vs. Canada

[Canuck21t]

My line-up squashes yours!

Nash - Thornton - Bertuzzi - the real 700 lb. line.
Kariya/St.Louis - Sakic - Iginla
Richards - Lecavalier - Heatley
Gagne - Draper - Doan


Pronger - Niedermayer
Jovanovski - Foote
Redden - Hannan/Bouwmeester

Brodeur


.

Canada's depth at RW is insanely good.

In fact, we are very thin on RW. If you look at the position the players play in the NHL, you'll notice that we don't have many elite RW. Only Dany Heatley, Martin St. Louis and Jarome Iginla are right-wingers. Now I know you meant RW on the team but if you look at the big picture we're lacking good RW.

 

[Canuck21t]

Newsflash. There is no such thing as clean hockey anymore. It's international hockey, it's war. You're either with us or against us. I didn't realize Prince George was annexed by Sweden.

Ryan Smyth has represented his country everytime he has been asked:

7 World Championships
World jr.s
World Cup
Olympics

I guess its mainly anti-Oiler sentiment from the Canuck fans. I don't see why though. I had no problem cheering for Jovo or Morrison.

I'm not at all a Canucks fan. Canuck is a Canadian no? I use this nickname everywhere on the internet, no matter if it's about hockey or not. I use Canuck because I want people to know that I'm Canadian. That's how much I love my country.

P.S. Throughout the tournament, I couldn't stand Jovo and Morrison so much they suck IMO.

 

[Canuck21t]

Canada's depth at RW is insanely good.

Oh yeah, Bertuzzi is a RW. But other than those mentioned, most of our elites are centers and left-wingers.

 

[Canuck21t]

Never posted their in my life. You can however, find me on Oilfans.com. Hockey talk is pretty dead there these days, so I headed to these parts.

Oh, and Canuck21t, I was referring to Dominator, and my buddy Sven as the coalition of Smyth hating canuck fans. Not you. Although you dissapoint me too, but at least you watched the game until the end. I'll grant you " Real Canadian in waiting" status. Give my boy Smytty some props for being a true pariot, and i'll upgrade your status. Sven, and Dom have a long ways to go.

I never doubted Smyth's patriotism. I just wish he had a cooler head that's all.

 

[Epsilon]

Never posted their in my life. You can however, find me on Oilfans.com. Hockey talk is pretty dead there these days, so I headed to these parts.

Oh, and Canuck21t, I was referring to Dominator, and my buddy Sven as the coalition of Smyth hating canuck fans. Not you. Although you dissapoint me too, but at least you watched the game until the end. I'll grant you " Real Canadian in waiting" status. Give my boy Smytty some props for being a true pariot, and i'll upgrade your status. Sven, and Dom have a long ways to go.

I'm a Wings fan, I couldn't care less about this Canucks/Oilers nonsense. Smyth was being a big baby, nothing else to it. His team was cleanly and soundly beaten and all he could do was swing his stick around in frustration.

 

[Vinceee]

I never doubted Smyth's patriotism. I just wish he had a cooler head that's all.

Every hockey player lost his temper once in their life... it was the first time for Smyth, nobody was injured...

Let's turn the page ok?

Out of topic... does anybody know why Leader was replaced with 6 stars in my Custom User Title?

 

[hockeyfan125]

Oh yeah, Bertuzzi is a RW. But other than those mentioned, most of our elites are centers and left-wingers.

Bertuzzi, Iginla, Doan, Heatley, St.Louis. That is 5 top-line premier players.

 

[blackgold]

I'm a Wings fan, I couldn't care less about this Canucks/Oilers nonsense. Smyth was being a big baby, nothing else to it. His team was cleanly and soundly beaten and all he could do was swing his stick around in frustration.

Sven, Sven, Sven

It's not his team it's "Our" team. I'm a nice guy. I'm willing to let you back in. Just tell us how proud you are of Smytty for being a good Canadian boy. I know you can do it. I bet you don't even have one piece of IKEA furniture yet.

 

[Epsilon]

Sven, Sven, Sven

It's not his team it's "Our" team. I'm a nice guy. I'm willing to let you back in. Just tell us how proud you are of Smytty for being a good Canadian boy. I know you can do it. I bet you don't even have one piece of IKEA furniture yet.

I imagine one must have to live a really sheltered life to live so vicariuously through a hockey team. Smyth acted like a spoiled child. Hopefully for him it's just a one-time thing and not an indication of a deeper level of immaturity. The fact that you have to resort to inventing names for people on here to try and insult them by suggesting they are "traitors" or some other such nonsense shows you have a bit of an immaturity problem yourself.

 

[blackgold]

I imagine one must have to live a really sheltered life to live so vicariuously through a hockey team. Smyth acted like a spoiled child. Hopefully for him it's just a one-time thing and not an indication of a deeper level of immaturity. The fact that you have to resort to inventing names for people on here to try and insult them by suggesting they are "traitors" or some other such nonsense shows you have a bit of an immaturity problem yourself.

I'm guessing you're fairly long in the tooth, and don't pick up on humour too well.

Maybe i'm a little bit immature tonight. I'll give you that.

Do I live vicariously through hockey teams? When it comes to team Canada, and the Oilers than I would have to say yes!

Did Smyth act like a spoiled child? I would have to say no, since the game was over. It didn't cost them anything.

Am I sheltered? Heck Sven, I just got back from Africa.

Good night, i'm all done now.

 

[Canuck21t]

Bertuzzi, Iginla, Doan, Heatley, St.Louis. That is 5 top-line premier players.

OK, I guess it's because I'm no big fan of Doan and Bertuzzi. I had a hard time choosing RW for my team. I only had 3 natural RW. As you can see, Doan and Bertuzzi are not on my team.

 

[Raipe]

great win for czechs Smyth looked like frodo

 

[Wisent]

Canada: Iginla, Lecavalier, St.Louis, Niedermayer, Pronger, Lemieux, Sakic, Bouwmester, Brewer, Richards, (Karyia), (Bertuzzi), (Theodore), (Yzerman) and the list goes on...

Russia & Sweden have a longer list than that... i wanna see the lists...with good players...

I'm not so sure that Yzerman, Brewer, Richards (too many centers) and Bouwmeester would have made to the team.

 

[Wisent]

Canada's best team would look like...

Todd Bertuzzi - Mario Lemieux - Martin St. Louis
Brad Richards - Joe Sakic - Jarome Iginla
Ryan Smyth - Vincent Lecavalier - Shane Doan
Rick Nash - Joe Thornton - Simon Gagne

Chris Pronger - Scott Niedermayer
Rob Blake - Adam Foote
Wade Redden - Eric Brewer

Martin Brodeur
Roberto Luongo

IMO that is unbeatable.

I don't think it would be unbeatable. These are all guys that didn't have a season this year, this is excaxtly what was wrong (it seems weird to call it wrong, since they made it to the finals) with this team. Plus, I would replace Brewer with Jovanovski (agreed, he played a horrible tournament, but that is not his normal self).

 

[Pepper]

Too bad Smyth wasn't man enough just to drop the gloves and sort it out with Fischer but instead had to resort to dirty stickwork.

If the roles were reserved this board would be down because of the certain Canadian fans would be here posting about the 'dirty european stickwork'.

I sure hope people remember this incident in the future and stop the stupid "it's us vs. the evil europeans" -crap (and all other nationalistic jingoism).

 

[Mr. Canucklehead]

Too bad Smyth wasn't man enough just to drop the gloves and sort it out with Fischer but instead had to resort to dirty stickwork.

If the roles were reserved this board would be down because of the certain Canadian fans would be here posting about the 'dirty european stickwork'.

I sure hope people remember this incident in the future and stop the stupid "it's us vs. the evil europeans" -crap (and all other nationalistic jingoism).

Glad you added that part in...I hope all European fans don't think Canadians think their players walk on air while European players can only do wrong.

As for the "it's us against the evil europeans" bit, there actually is a smidgen of truth to that, but not in the way you think. It is a "Canada vs The World" mentality going into a lot of tournaments, because Canada is often one of, if not the favorite, to win the whole thing. So other teams go in there gunning for Canada(not gunning in a dirty sense, but gunning in the Bringing their All sense). And it's not much different for other countries; the Czech Republic had that same thing going for them during their run on top of the world. But there's that added bit of pressure for Canadians given that it's our national game, and so on and so forth.

But please don't paint all Canadian fans and players with one brush because of a few bad apples...

~Canucklehead~

 

[Jazz]

Now this is interesting...

In a post-game interview, Czech goaltender Tomas Vokoun admitted that he sought out Canadian assistant coach Craig MacTavish after the game for his part in the melée that took place in the final seconds of the game... He said that his emotions boiled over and regrets his part in something. I've heard on another radio station that it might have been something to do with Dan Snyder, the Atlanta player who died in the car with Dany Heatley in Sept 2003 (no archive of this station)

Gotta give him credit for that - no often that you hear a sports athlete take responsibility for anything, so I've got some new-found respect for him now..

Anyways, you can hear inteviews (in English) with
*Jaromir Jagr
*Tomas Vokoun
*Brenden Morisson
*Team Canada GM Steve Tambellini
*Canadian coach Marc Habsheid here on line archived radio..

Here is the archived link:

* Go to http://www.cknw.com/audiovault/audiovault.cfm
* (register for the service - it's free)
* Select "SUN MAY 15" under date: and "9pm" under hour and hit "GO".
Windows Media player will open up.
* Adjust the scroll on the bottom to "35:35".

"I did something that I am not proud of and I was trying to apologize after the game.....I did something stupid" - Czech Goalie Tomas Vokoun

He would not elaborate beyond that...

I have not looked at the video of the last minute (I have it taped, but too lazy to look at this point), so I'm not sure when this happened exactly, and if it caused emotions to rage even further and spill into the near-brawl that happened...

 

[Shareefruck]

There's absolutely nothing wrong with the roster itself. The problem is that most of these players ( especially the defense ) didn't play at all this year. So really, this wasn't Canada's B team at all. It was just Thornton and Nash.

Canada still had the best team on paper by far, and if this were like any other season where players were all in shape, I'd be VERY surprised if they didn't just dominate everyone like they normally do.

Granted, management should have taken all of that into account and made better decisions with who they picked based on this, and Canada played like crap as a result. Czechs definately deserved the win.

Canada's B team and Czech's A team are probably neck and neck, though.

 

[Zine]

Canada's B team and Czech's A team are probably neck and neck, though.

How'd you come up with this? The Czech A team is every bit on par with Canada's A team.

In the last 3 "best on best" tourneys ('98 OG, '02 OG, '04WC) both teams are 1-1-1 against each other - and every game was tied at the end of regulation.

 

[psycho_dad*]

Jeez... Everyone here who is having a hissy fit over what Smyth did obviously have never played hockey before. Or at least never lost a meaningful game.

Seriously guys, don't you have any competitive spirit?

I'm pretty sure every player on the teams that actually have a chance (the top 7) have competitive spirit, a hunger to win. Everyone is really disappointed if they lose, these guys HATE losing. But still...most players are able to lose with class. What Smyth did was an embarrasement for Canadian hockey and especially Ryan Smyth himself. It would be ok if this was an individual sport where he would not drag his teammates in the mud also, but he was the team captain and this is how he wanted to lose. You just don't see that happening when other teams lose, and those teams want to win just as bad. I would have understood what he did if there would have been a second game coming...that would make at least some sense if they wanted to send a message to the next game, but that was not the case here. Like one of your fans already stated (and I applaud him for doing so), the best way to show patriotism is the ability to also critisize when needed and try to recognize the mistakes and correct them.

Just because one of your own understands that Smyth's actions were not classy at all, does not make him any less patriot, maybe a bit more patriot than the rest of the bunch. Don't be so american...they are known to silence all opposition with this "if you critisize youre not a patriot" bs, and by doing so they are actually stripping an individual his freedom of speech, which they hold so dear.

 

[Pepper]

Glad you added that part in...I hope all European fans don't think Canadians think their players walk on air while European players can only do wrong.

But please don't paint all Canadian fans and players with one brush because of a few bad apples...

~Canucklehead~

I should have been more clear in my original post, I'm talking about few (newish) Canadian posters who were the target of my 'rant', I don't think any of the board regulars were guilty of that.

And don't get me wrong, same goes for certain European posters as well.

The past stereotypics about styles of different continents & countries should be put to rest, hockey has internationalized a lot in the last 10-15 years so what used to be trademarks of czech or russian teams are largely outdated in today's hockey world.

 

[Pepper]

I hope Vokoun didn't say anything about Snyder because it's a verbal cheap shot of worst kind. Whatever it was, kudos to him for being man enough to take responsibility of it and apologize, something I'd like to see Ryan Smyth to do as well.

 

[SergeiK]

I hope Vokoun didn't say anything about Snyder because it's a verbal cheap shot of worst kind.

Because Vokoun was looking for Craig MacTavish I suspect he linked verbally MacTavish and Heatley somehow together and said so to Heatley in heat of battle. Maybe something about carpool or something else ill-natured that only evil minds can come up with.

I believe that kind of remark shows lack of good taste from Vokoun

 

[Rogalo]

Some of those hits were slashing the ankles. Besides, a captain is not supposed to lead by an example like that.

And here we go again. Europeans against Canadians. Europeans call Smyth´s action slashing - Canadians like waffledave call it "love taps" . IMO Smyth looked like a f...ing Pejorative Slur out there with that slashing and made the whole pub where I was watching the game laugh. On the other hand I found it very sad that even a Canadian captain does not know how to lose.

 

[wilka91*]

How'd you come up with this? The Czech A team is every bit on par with Canada's A team.

In the last 3 "best on best" tourneys ('98 OG, '02 OG, '04WC) both teams are 1-1-1 against each other - and every game was tied at the end of regulation.

And now the Czechs took the advantage!