Comments on: Top 5 reasons why Russia failed at the Olympics

By: jtlc

jtlc — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 07:16:00 +0000

bribes & corruption!!!!!! last time i looked, there were only a few countries ranked less corrupt than canada, and only a few countries more corrupt than russia. ‘money’.. ovetchkin,malkin, kovolchuck,etc., would be paid a lot more in the khl, but still want to play in the nhl. bad refereeing & on drugs… you’re grasping at straws, i’m laughing at you. next year’s wjc is in the u.s.a., the spiders will have a field day in all those empty seats.

By: John

John — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 03:06:00 +0000

lovetobeatherussians,
I’m impressed! For a duphus hoser Canuck, that was a fairly coherent comment. Like the rest of the hosers who have been writing in, you’re beating your chest over the big win over Russia last week. You’re entitled to crow over that 4-goal win over the Russians last Wednesday, especially because the sentiment was before the game that Canada goes in as an underdog. Yeah, home team, home ice, home fans, home referees (both of the refs in the game were loyal Canadian sons). Why underdogs, with all the home cooking you can eat? Maybe the world thought the Russians would roll over the Canucks because of Quebec in 2008. World Championship, Gold Medal game, home ice, 2-goal lead going into the third period. Or maybe it was because of the 2009 World Championships, when the NHL-only Maple Leaf squad, Stamkos and Nash, going up against a KHL-dominated Russian team, Morozov and Radulov, and you guys managed a grand total of 1 goal!
It sounds like you missed the point of what the big story was in Olympic hockey. Its been happening in youth hockey for the last several years. Who won Gold Medal in the U-16, U-17. U-18 and U-20 World Championships this year? And with all the advantages in Canada’s favor in Vancouver, who pushed Canada to have to barely eke out a 1-1 tie in games played against each other, with a total goal advantage over Canada from both games. In the big show, who forced tens of thousands of heart attacks across Canada by holding the overrated homeboys to a whopping 2 goals in regulation time, before tying the game and forcing it into overtime. I know there were 32 million Canadian hearts that came out of their mouths when the previously missing in action Sid the Kid got a lucky bounce on a one-timer in overtime! Not exactly a dominating performance.
The real story of Olympic hockey was the changing of the guard. I’m going to have to be more direct, because you’re probably still not figuring out what I’m alluding to here. In North America, the US is moving to the top of the mountain, and they’re pushing Canada down to a lower rung! Its happening at every level of hockey, and its probably only going to get worse for the Maple Leaf boys.

By: malkinfan

malkinfan — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 04:05:00 +0000

By the way, good write Alessandro. Only disagreement is that I don’t know if it was a lack of spirit, looked more like poor chemistry than anything, and yes they did quit after the 3rd goal (but who’s to blame at that point). The whole tournament you could see that Ovechkin missed a Backstrom typed center, (Thought for sure that Kozlov was on the team for that sole purpose (because it wasn’t he shouldn’t even have been there)).
They could have also used some role players like Brylin and Kulemin who are defensively minded, rather than Kozlov, Zinoviev, Zaripov who are defensive liabilities and were rather ineffective.

By: malkinfan

malkinfan — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 03:58:00 +0000

I don’t think there were too many KHL players, just too many of the wrong ones. The bottom line was Bykov summoned certain players who didn’t perform at the level that he thought they could. I mean Zinoviev and Zaripov were very disappointing and they saw a lot of ice time. He simply went with the wrong horses.
I just don’t think that Bykov made the right decisions when he had too. ie goaltender situation, scoring chemistry, team selection etc… He should have taken some of Barry Smith’s advice.
Hope to see some drastic changes next Olympics. The one line I like from Bykov was that “your generals need to become foot soldiers” (at the Olympics) in order for success. Unfortunately it is up to Bykov to instill this upon his players, and he didn’t.

By: jtlc

jtlc — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 01:16:00 +0000

Overtime… 2 0n 2… Iginla chips the puck to Crosby… Sid ‘the Kid’ shoots and… both John & Russia_4_Life heads explode !!!!GOLD….Tomorrow, the NHL resumes play. My team might not make the playoffs for that old,dented 1893 cup. It has a Russian player on it & I desperately want his name etched on it for eternity, bringing Lord Stanley home to Russia. An Olympic gold medal will always be 2nd banana to the ‘people’s cup’

By: John

John — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 17:16:00 +0000

Russia_4_Life:
I totally agree with what you say! If you go back to the 1970’s and 80’s, the differences in skill level was even more pronounced than now. Russian players all played in Russia for teams like CSKA and Dynamo, and they trained together, and trained very hard, for most of the year. What they could produce on the ice was pure magic!
Starting in 1991, when all the best Russian players immediately took off for the NHL (with the prospect of that much money, who could blame them?), they had to adapt to the NHL dump and bump style. The Russian players were ripped to pieces by the media and the fans for not adapting well – “no heart,””not physical enough,””won’t come back on defense,” were the most common criticisms that were heaped on the Russian players. Which makes little sense, since they invested millions to bring over players who were primarily highly talented, skilled, finesse players, whom they expected, for some strange reason, to transform into “gritty grinders” overnight.
That’s why I have my fingers crossed hoping that the KHL and MHL will advance enough to be really outstanding leagues where skilled hockey can be played again. It would be a great shame if the kind of magnificent hockey that Russian teams from the 70’s and 80’s played should completely vanish from the Earth.

By: John

John — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 05:09:00 +0000

WILL CANADA APPEAR AT THE RINK ON SUNDAY….OR WILL THEY FORFEIT AND CONCEDE THE GOLD MEDAL TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA? In my opinion, the Maple Leaf nation is better off surrendering now, and avoiding a huge national embarrassment on Sunday. That was a putrid performance tonight against Slovakia. Get down on your knees and beg God thanks that you lucked into the Gold Medal game!!!

By: John

John — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 02:13:00 +0000

HIGGY BABY!
Canadian hockey players are as skilled as Russians? No one is going to buy that! I’ll give Canadians their due, but I’m not going to make up a fantasy about them. Not only are Canadians not as skilled as Russians, they are also not as skilled as Swedes, Finns, Czechs, and maybe tonight, Slovaks! The Canadian hockey hierarchy have been complaining about the absence of skill in the Canadian game ever since 1972, and for good reason! Canadian youth hockey doesn’t teach skill, doesn’t reward it, and frankly, I don’t think they care about it. It’s not what will win a job in the NHL.
Canadian hockey is all about dump and bump. If you have enough skill to advance the puck to center ice so that you can dump it into the offensive zone and chase it, that’s all a Canadian coach wlll ever ask of you. That’s why TV audiences in the US are smaller for NHL games than for documentaries about sea lions mating. Canada has won a lot of youth tournaments in recent years, but that can be attributed to a low-skill dump and bump hockey and a lot of home cookin’ (almost all world junior games at every age level are either played in Canada, or in the US less than 20 miles from the Canadian border.
I’m not saying that with that many hockey players, you aren’t going to have the odd Bobby Orr or Gretzky or Lemieux, but its amazing how few skilled players Canada produces, given the huge size of the hockey playing population.

By: jtlc

jtlc — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 20:35:00 +0000

Trondsky… You feces obsessed trogladite.. You would stain this site by mentioning ‘football ( soccer in N.America). Hockey is played by men who don’t dive or embelish a check,then ly face down on the ice for sympathy from the ref…. wait …. that sounds like a russian player. Canada will be sending a slighly smaller ‘team’ to Sochi for the ‘speed kills’ on the bigger ice. Smaller Canadians are twice as nasty. Skill pfffff, I’ll take heart everytime.

By: Alexander Zaitsev

Alexander Zaitsev — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 13:52:00 +0000

@dimi19
I think it has something to do with the fact that Kovalev didn’t call Bykov back before the World Championship 2008.