Quote:
Originally Posted by megatron
Why are Canada and the US in the same pool/group in the Olympics?
Aren't they the two best teams in the world and should be in opposite pool/group so they can meet in the final?
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For starters, that's not how the schedule of the next olympic tournament works.
There are
three groups, which seem to have been formed like this:
1) Take the top three countries in IIHF Rankings (Canada, Finland, Russia) and place them in different groups.
2) Take the next five in the IIHF rankings (US, Germany, Czech, Sweden, Switzerland), the host (China), and the three teams that made the olympics through qualification tournaments (Denmark, Latvia and Slovakia) and split those randomly within the groups.
Which gives you
A Canada, US, Germany, China
B Russia, Czech, Switzerland, Denmark
C Finland, Sweden, Slovakia, Latvia
(The process might have been more complicated, but I couldn't find it and this is close enough anyway.)
All teams make the playoffs, BUT the best four teams (group winners + best 2nd place) go straight to quarterfinals, while the other 8 will play an additional playoff round, with the 5th best team playing the 12th best and so on. Theoretically the US and Canada could meet again in any round of the playoffs except the first, and in practice if the first US-Canada game goes into OT (for example), it's unlikely they would meet again before the final. (The explanation to that is too long for me to bother here.)
Also, while US has no shortage on star power, as a team they haven't really done anything to make them stand out from among the other contenders behind Canada. The latest best of the best tournament (2016 World Cup) they bowed out with three straight losses in the group phase and they were 4th in the last serious olympic tournament. Strong contender sure, but hardly "the 2nd best team in the world".