Btw, it's not completely true that there hasn't been any development in womens hockey. It's just that the development has been pretty slow and it's in two tiers. In the top tier, US has caught up to Canada, and in the second tier other countries have caught up to Finland.
In the 90's, before womens hockey was in the olympics, the medals were always Canada, US, Finland, in that order.
Then in the 2000's US started to beat Canada at times, and Sweden started to beat Finland. Other surprises started to happen. Russia got bronze in WC. Sweden got silver in 2006 olympics.
In the 10's, the battle for bronze has become a fourway between Finland, Sweden, Russia and Switzerland. The playoffs have also slowly become somewhat more competitive.
The differences in power change slowly in sports, because it takes a generation change to do it. So far the competition has toughened in each generation.
|