It's just hard to give a shit about a tournament where the majority of the best players don't go because they have something better to do, or even just don't care.
Timminz wrote:It's just hard to give a shit about a tournament where the majority of the best players don't go because they have something better to do, or even just don't care.
"World Championships" is a terrible name for it.
Canada isn't failing in the tournament because you don't care about it.
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Timminz wrote:It's just hard to give a shit about a tournament where the majority of the best players don't go because they have something better to do, or even just don't care.
"World Championships" is a terrible name for it.
Canada isn't failing in the tournament because you don't care about it.
They are failing because the players don't care. Take the NIT (or whatever the hell it's called these days). You think the best team left out of the main field of 64 wins the NIT every year? No. In fact, plenty of times, a big name school butthurt over not making it to the Big Dance will pass on their invite to the NIT, because that's not the tourney they worked so hard to get into, and they just don't care.
You probably don't know what I'm talking about, but the Americans (and possibly Canadians) will know.
Timminz wrote:It's just hard to give a shit about a tournament where the majority of the best players don't go because they have something better to do, or even just don't care.
"World Championships" is a terrible name for it.
Canada isn't failing in the tournament because you don't care about it.
They are failing because the players don't care. Take the NIT (or whatever the hell it's called these days). You think the best team left out of the main field of 64 wins the NIT every year? No. In fact, plenty of times, a big name school butthurt over not making it to the Big Dance will pass on their invite to the NIT, because that's not the tourney they worked so hard to get into, and they just don't care.
You probably don't know what I'm talking about, but the Americans (and possibly Canadians) will know.
Bollocks.
I googled it and I understood you're talking about basketball but that's pretty much it. Nonetheless, your argument was that the teams with the good players on them doesn't go, Canada's failure in the worlds championship is not that it doesn't have good players on their team compared to the other teams that play in the same tournament. Canada's B-team is ridicoulusly much better than Sweden's B-team, and yet Sweden's B-team has had a lot more success in the world the last 5 years. You can't claim that Canada doesn't have good players on their roster in the worlds championship, because the other teams that it gets beaten by is not starring nowhere near as good teams as they are (except perhaps Russia).
AoG for President of the World!! I promise he will put George W. Bush to shame!
I'm not sure about this but I assume the Swedish players played more often with the other players, whereas Canada is 4000 MILES long. Many players have not played with their teammates as much as the Swedes have. That could be a possible answer to your question. A team by nature is not necessarily the sum of it's players.
notyou2 wrote:I'm not sure about this but I assume the Swedish players played more often with the other players, whereas Canada is 4000 MILES long. Many players have not played with their teammates as much as the Swedes have. That could be a possible answer to your question. A team by nature is not necessarily the sum of it's players.
Why are you talking about the width of Canada? Most players on Canada's team play in the U.S. Anyway if you have a point and teamwork is the problem why does Canada succeed in the Olympics? Don't tell me that Crosby and Perry plays more together than Joel Ward and Nathan MacKinnon does.
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It takes time to gel as a team. The Olympic team I believe has more pre-tournament time as a team. I am referring to their life playing hockey. The players from the east don't see players from the west of Canada until they are late teens at the earliest. I assume in Sweden they may see each other sooner due to the smaller size of the country. Is that hard to grasp?
Serbia wrote:The B teams aren't playing. Canada isn't sending their next best players, they are sending the players who are available, and who want to go.
Bollocks.
Call it their C-team then or whatever you want to call it. Canada's D-team is still better than Sweden's B-team so it does not matter. Just look at their rosters and compare the amount of NHL players on each of them, Sweden had 3, Canada had a team full of NHL players. And don't for a second think that even the best players in the swedish elite leaugue is better than even third line NHL players. Canada's roster speaks for itself and that roster is not so bad that it should lose in the quarterfinals in five consecutive years. Every year in the last five years they have either had the best or the second best team in the tournament, and it is with that good of a team that they've lost.
AoG for President of the World!! I promise he will put George W. Bush to shame!
notyou2 wrote:It takes time to gel as a team. The Olympic team I believe has more pre-tournament time as a team. I am referring to their life playing hockey. The players from the east don't see players from the west of Canada until they are late teens at the earliest. I assume in Sweden they may see each other sooner due to the smaller size of the country. Is that hard to grasp?
You're talking about their time playing midget leauges? Well you should've said that then. I guess you have a point there, the really good swedish players do come across each other at an earlier stage and get to play against each other. Perhaps that could be part of the reason why Canada is not very good at the world championships. The players that participate tend to be young and have limited experience playing against each other in the NHL, once they get older they aquire more of that experience which evens it out. There's no doubt that the Canadian teams that enter the worlds are skillfull enough to be favorites, but their inability to work together shoots down their chances. Unfortunately if that is the case there's not much the management can do about it, save for turning down younger players and focusing on the older ones.
AoG for President of the World!! I promise he will put George W. Bush to shame!
Serbia wrote:The B teams aren't playing. Canada isn't sending their next best players, they are sending the players who are available, and who want to go.
Bollocks.
Call it their C-team then or whatever you want to call it. Canada's D-team is still better than Sweden's B-team so it does not matter. Just look at their rosters and compare the amount of NHL players on each of them, Sweden had 3, Canada had a team full of NHL players. And don't for a second think that even the best players in the swedish elite leaugue is better than even third line NHL players. Canada's roster speaks for itself and that roster is not so bad that it should lose in the quarterfinals in five consecutive years. Every year in the last five years they have either had the best or the second best team in the tournament, and it is with that good of a team that they've lost.
Weren't the Swede's missing a big time goalie for these championships?
Didn't get to see it or hear who won Gilli, but I was pulling for Finland.
We were missing a big time everything, almost no one from the NHL was interested in playing this year, so keeping that in mind, a third place finish is not bad.
AoG for President of the World!! I promise he will put George W. Bush to shame!
Both the Kings and Rangers needed big comebacks to get this far. If they both advance it will be the first time in ages that so many games have been needed to reach the finals.