Finland now has 3 gold medal wins in this event. The 1987 win was tainted by a Soviet/Canada post game brawl disqualifying those two countries and handing the Finns the gold medal. However, Finland was full value for their wins in 1998 and 2014. Considering the population of Finland is only 5.2 million the three gold medals are a great accomplishment.
Canada gets to host roughly half of these tourneys because the games bring in more cash than other countries. The Canadian ice surface size of 200X85 and home cooking gives them a bit of a home ice advantage. Many of the European players are accustomed to a 200X100 ice surface.
Five Countries Can Win
Canada, Russia, Sweden, Finland, and the USA all have a realistic chance at winning this event. In the past 6 years every one of these five countries has won gold. USA won twice, in 2010 and 2013.
One Game Playoff Eliminations Mean Anything Is Possible
Slovakia beat Finland 2-1 on Saturday night. http://www.tsn.ca/world-juniors/game/slovakia-finland-20141227/Stats Finland is far better than Slovakia. In the game Finland outshot Slovakia 38 to 12. This did not eliminate Finland because it is the preliminary round. However, the playoffs are single game elimination. A hot goalie and some luck can allow any team in this event to defeat and eliminate any one of the top five teams.
My View Of This Event
I have Canada as a slight favourite to win this. USA, Sweden and Russia are next in line and its too close for me to call between those three. Finally, the dark horse to win a 2nd consecutive gold is Finland. I can't see any team outside of this group of 5 winning this event.
Russia goes to a shoot out against Denmark... 2 days later... they blow out Switzerland.... even though the Russians basically spent 2/3s of the 2nd period short handed.
Russia has a 7-0 lead and they are on the power play with 2 minutes left. They give up 2 odd man rushes. Sorry, I'm calling bullshit. Bad sportsmanship and bad game play by a bunch of bafoons trying to fill the net with a game already over.
if the MODS want to edit the title and add "World", great, it can't hurt. However, I don't think it matters much because the thread is going to get buried in a week any way.
The CHL doesn't have their 2015 Championships in 2014.. its in May. most people on TL are not canadian and don't know what the CHL is.
forget about Russian, Finns ,Swedes and Americans thinking about the CHL.
i dont think it matters much, but thanks for your input.
Here is the 5 minute major/game misconduct penalty call in the Swiss v. Russia game. It resulted in Baltisberger getting stretchered off the ice.
only 2 out of Denmark, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic gets to move into the playoff round. The Czechs are at the bottom of their group with ZERO points so it'll be interesting to see which 2 teams survive.
the gang i watched the game with who all watch far more regular season NHL hockey than i do basically all said this "can't remember the last NHL regular season hockey game i've seen that was as entertaining as today's Canada v. USA game." and, i'm not surprised by that one bit.
yes. that is a "Domi" chant in Montreal.
one thing i'm surprised by, Finland and Russia both still could end up in 4th place in their group.
Canada is not playing very well without the puck. However, this weakness can not be fully exposed until the gold medal game. It's Denmark and Slovakia before the gold medal game.
This is the bad side of having every player on the team being a high powered offensive oriented talent. They don't know what to do without the puck.
Has there been some marginal improvement ? maybe.. its really tough to tell in these short tournies. in their 1 win against Switzerland they were badly outshot. Switzerland outshot them something like 45 to 20.
looks like the same team with a hot goalie to me.
Canada's curb stompin' tonight looked pretty similar to the last time these teams played in 2012... i wasn't exactly riveted to my TV for either game though.
on TSN they said Denmark only has 25 indoor hockey arenas so i don't know if u can say they are moving resources towards hockey.
this is why these short 1-game elimination tournaments don't mean much.
Russia plays "meh" the entire tournament and then thoroughly dominates undefeated Sweden in the 1st period. was this the same team that played the US a couple of days ago?
I really like how the Russians played that first period and Sweden is lucky to escape with a scoreless tie.
the moment that swede decided to crap on his own team and go into a clear penalty right after 1st goal, which lead to the second goal on PP, the team simply collapsed. What Russian players were doing in the beginning of the 3rd period was not even funny, they were literally strolling in the offensive zone like they belong there ...
Russia played great team defense the entire game. They were all over Sweden and looked more like the 1995/2000/2003 New Jersey Devils team then your stereotypical Russian team. The Russian forwards laid down in front of so many shots from the point... they paid the price.
Russia did have the deadly counter-punch offense they've been famous for for decades. Also, they displayed their patented long bomb 100+ foot passes.
Russia thoroughly outplayed Sweden from start to finish.
So ok, i missed the game (obviously, the schedule is not workweek friendly), but from the reports i read it looked like a classic Russia-Canada game, with Canadians taking a full control from the face-off and crushing the Russians in the first period/30 minutes, then Russia trying to get back into the game, sometimes this is possible (JWC Buffalo-11, WC Quebec-08), but usually its already too late (OG Vancouver-10 etc). This was the case when the lead was too big to get back. History teaches us that if Canada takes a lead of 4 and more goals, its over... Anyway super-successful tournament for us, what impressed me is a number of very talented players showing up, this generation was actually supposed to be doomed, but apparently, its not. I would be happy to see a bunch of these new guys in the next Olympic roster for team Russia, those fucktarts who pooped on last two tournaments should go to hell. Good job to both teams!
Canada 5 ; Russia 4... close game. Russia outplayed Canada by a small margin. Canada got much better goaltending.
Caveat on Russia outplaying Canada Its hard to tell if Russia would've dominated play for so long in the 2nd period if Canada didn't break out to a 5-1 lead. Also, Ref called chintzy penalties on Canada and none on Russia.
Some casual observers claim Russian hockey is in decline. In the past 5 years Russia has been the best team in this tournament. Also, Russia's juniors come over to North America to play in the "Subway Series" against the OHL, WHL and QMJHL. They play great in this event as well. Russian hockey is alive and well.
with respect to the finns, swedes, and americans... the best hockey games ever played are Russia/U.S.S.R. versus Canada... and the score is 6-5 or 5-4.
Congratz to Canada; they never trailed in the 2014 Olympics and now they went the entire 2015 World Juniors while never trailing. 39 goals for... 9 goals against over 7 games.
Mike Babcock and Benoit Groulx deserve a lot of credit for the above mentioned 2 accomplishments.
they pulled off the international hat trick with wins over Canada and Sweden and Russia to win Gold. Helsinki put on a great show.. over 1 million Finns tuned into the Canada/Finland game.
Heartbreaking Silver for Russia for the 2nd year in a row. If you combine both years together you'd have to say Russia has had the best team over all.
To Andy Elo, my Finnish Starcraft and Chess rival... party on my brother!
On January 06 2016 06:37 amazingxkcd wrote: eh, USA made it to semis and Slovakia made it to Ro8. Im ok with that, I guess??
Ron Wilson is a hard-ass, ruthless, dick face. and, i mean that in a complimentary way. He is a good hockey man and its great to see Ron Wilson with his confidence back.
as Hodge notes: no Canadian players were discussed as being amongst the best in the tournament. In particular Canada's crop of 17 year olds and 18 year olds are very average relative to other counry's players. The last time Canada did worse over a 5 year stretch than the current run is 1977 to 1981. Back then Canada didn't take the event seriously.
So, I agree with Dave Hodge's conclustion that this event will no longer be dominated by Canada. And really, over the past 5 years Canada has not dominated the event. Finland and Sweden are currently the most dominant countries in a very close race.
Participation in organized hockey in Canada is declining quickly due to the high cost of playing hockey and injuries. We are seeing the impact of lower participation now.
Disorganized hockey on a frozen river is still fun though.
EPT
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