Team USA Olympic Summer Camp

[Pierre "Monster" McGuire]

Originally Posted by Textcritic

^
God, I hate Sweden. Is that weird?

Not at all. It's their haircuts. Get rid of their hair and you've got a pretty good country.

[Inglewood Jack]

Originally Posted by tempz

All I'm trying to show is the gap isn't as big as people make it out to be.

Originally Posted by tempz

Would more than one member of the American defense make team Canada? Probably not.

team USA defense does not suck by any stretch and they'll mostly get the job done, but the above two statements seem to clash a bit.

[vilzeh]

It's a short tournament, the gap is not wide, 1 game elimination, of course if you go by the names, Canada should dominate the tournament hands down, without competition, but fortunately that is not the case.

[tempz]

Originally Posted by moon

I think you are underselling the Canadian guys by calling them "sexier." They aren't "sexier" players they are better players.

To me it is coming off as though you are saying they are equal/similar guys but people like the Canadian guys better because they have more recognizable names. People like the Canadian guys more because they are much better.

But perhaps I am miss reading your use of the word.

By sexier I mean more likely to have their name called by the play by play announcer, their plays are more noticeable shift to shift by the average fan. Can often make something out of nothing. Good skaters, good puck handlers, guys who will jump in the play and join the rush. Non-sexy guys can still be highly effective by having solid positioning, good first passes. Maybe be the trailer on a rush instead of leading it.

From my perspective a non-sexy offensive play would be a well placed shot from the point that generates a rebound that gets put in by a teammate. A comparable sexy offensive play would be Shea Weber shooting a hole through the top corner.

[moon]

Originally Posted by vilzeh

It's a short tournament, the gap is not wide, 1 game elimination, of course if you go by the names, Canada should dominate the tournament hands down, without competition, but fortunately that is not the case.

I think if you took the top 8 (Can, Swe, US, Russia, Fin, Czech, Slov, Switz) and had a NHL play-off style 7 game tournament that Canada would win easily but in the one game elimination anything can happen and as we have seen talented Canadian teams can go out early if they don't bring their A game.

[tempz]

Originally Posted by Inglewood Jack

team USA defense does not suck by any stretch and they'll mostly get the job done, but the above two statements seem to clash a bit.

Right and of course I'm in way over my head now lol but my original comment was in response to someone saying the US had goaltending and lacked depth everywhere else. I disagree with that analysis of their defense and I was using Team Canada as a baseline which is probably a bad idea.

I'll backpedal out of my statement that I like their defense core better than ours overall. Our guys can play defense, I was being pretty nitpicky. I'd prefer to see a warrior type player like Dan Girardi get consideration but the fact that he is left off shows just how strong our program is.

[vilzeh]

Originally Posted by moon

I think if you took the top 8 (Can, Swe, US, Russia, Fin, Czech, Slov, Switz) and had a NHL play-off style 7 game tournament that Canada would win easily but in the one game elimination anything can happen and as we have seen talented Canadian teams can go out early if they don't bring their A game.

Exactly.

[BACKCHECK!!!]

Originally Posted by tempz

To carry on the discussion from yesterday about our defense not being that far apart I decided to crunch some numbers to see if I was smoking as much crack as everyone seemed to think when I made the statement yesterday about the US defensive core being close to if not better than Canadas.

What I did was I took the top 6 left handed shots and the top 6 right handed shots from each country. Lined them up, came up with a top 7 for each country. Compared their stats for last season as both an entire pool of players both countries have to draw from, and the top 7 I came up with.

Things I found from this comparison:

1) Canada has a much deeper pool to draw from, blows the US away when you analyze the top 12
2) Team Canada is very strong on right handed shots, weak on left handed shots where as Team USA has a better mix of both handed shots.
3) This does not take into consideration that Team Canada may have Right Handed shots playing the right point on their actual final roster.
4) I left off Letang and Subban from the final grouping, yes that skews the numbers a bit but I don't think I'm way off in the rosters I came up with.

Rosters I went with, please let me know if you think these are way off or if I missed someone (entirely possible) and I'll make adjustments:

USA:

Carlson - Suter
Shattenkirk - Yandle
Byfuglien - Mcdonagh
Martin

Canada:

Weber - Keith
Doughty - Bouwmeester
Pietrangelo - Staal
Seabrook

GP, Weight, TOI are all averages. I'm not smart enough to know how to average height without too much work. All stats pulled from hockey-reference.com.

NSFW!

TLDR - People here undervalue the likes of Carlson, Mcdonagh, and Yandle. Feel free to flame away at what I skrewed up and how much I suck because team Canada is Godly and no one is even close and one year of stats isn't relevant etc. etc.

Note: I'm Canadian.

I'm glad you did this.
I'm completely unconvinced by it, because boxscores are basically useless for evaluating defencemen (except TOI), but I really like it when people try to use facts to back up their assertions.

Incidentally, I also agree that while everyone on the US defence (except Suter) is a step below the Canadian D, it's not a huge step, and they are close enough to win a single elimination matchup.

[Ice]

There is no way Jack Johnson doesn't make the final USA roster.

Team Canada will always have the deepest talent pool. There's no question about that. I still enjoy watching what all the other countries can put together. Until the games are played, you never really know in these tournaments. That's what makes it fun to watch.

[Enoch Root]

I am out of thanks, but I agree 100% with moon and the general consensus.

In a playoff format, there is no question that the Canadian depth wins out. However, the gap between the top teams is not that huge and in an elimination tournament, anything can happen. A hot goalie can get you a gold medal.

That is why the Olympics are so exciting as so intense.