Olympic Hockey - House League round robin!
Posted by: somethingelse in olympics, Hockey on Feb 22, 2010
Olympic hockey is like house league. They play three games of round robin for what? Everyone makes the fckin playoffs! You got Latvia and Germany who play worse than half the women teams for the first three games, BUT! don't count them out yet, because they might have been relaxing during round robin and are will show their true colors come "playoff qualifiers?" WTF?!
I mean don't get me wrong, I was born in Riga, Latvia and I’d love to see them steal a medal. Don’t forget these guys made the quarters in the world championships a couple of years ago and gave Canada a run for their money in a close 5-4 quarter final...
I know there's qualification to make the Olympics, but that's BS too...would have been better if they just had a 4th group; let Denmark, Kazakhstan, Italy and France play, all of which will be playing at the IIHF World Championships in May and make it so the basement team in each group goes home. That would make the round robin a lot more competitive and Olympic hockey would have a fckin point!
This is the format of the world championships this year, and I can assure you that if Latvia plays as crap as they’ve played in the Olympics, they would not have one more chance to take down Slovakia, who played their fckin heart out the first three games even beating Russia (who has Ovechkin and Malkin) and still have a shot at a medal!
If Olympics Hockey is supposed to be best of the best, where all the countries in the world get to compete, then why the hell do they have a house league format with only a dozen teams? Do I have a point or am I just a fckin Ukranian/Latvian half-breed going on a ramble streak?
Russia for Gold!
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2/3 or 3/5 playoffs would be awesome for sure, but keep in mind the Olympics are only a 2 week event. What I'd like see is more teams playing instead of seeing the same teams play against each other multiple times before the actual playoffs.
germany, latvia and norway lost all their games; no one cares to see them lose again or pull rabbits out their ass, lets see some teams who actually put in some effort in the round robin and DESERVE a shot at the medal.
but yea, return of the Canada/World Cup would be nice to see also
Sounds like sour grapes to me, asking for a best of three format for the olympics. One of the things that make the Olympics exciting and fun to watch is that you get one shot every 4 years to be great. Choke and that's it.
Is it fair that downhill skiers get 1 shot at a run? Or snow-crossers get wiped out by an out-of-control competitors? Or figure skaters get one chance to land a quad-jump?
One shot a glory is exciting and compelling. The best team won't always win. But under your system we would have never had "The Mircle On Ice" team of 1980.
The format sucks, rid the Olympics of professional players and bring back the Canada Cup or World Cup every 2-3 years and the final is a best out of 2/3 or 3/5. Football is the only sport that can justify a single game championship, hockey, like basketball and baseball require a series to determine who is really the best. Olympic hockey is 90% goalie, 10% rest of the team, a hot goalie can steal a win, just watch the tape of Canada - USA or Slovokia - Russia, neither team had any business winning those games, it was the play of their respective goalies that determined the outcome.