It's too bad we can't change our lineup during the tournament. It would be nice to beat them with a team of only Michaels.
Is there a rule saying all the players can't change their last name to Michael for a day? "Michael with the pass to Michael, he scores on the Chinese again."
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Every Olympics insert that joke about putting a regular person against the athletes so we can see just how good they are. Maybe this is that opportunity?
It's funny that the IIHF cares so much when in divisions lower than the top division there's regularly games like 20-0. Kazakhstan beat Iceland 63-0 once (Antropov had 20 goals in that game).
I find it interesting that they didn’t start an intensive development and training program the minute they were awarded the games. It’s happened before in other sports and when they put that kind of effort in they had respectable performances.
Love how they so worried about the men's team when the womans team will probably get smacked around by 15 or 20 goals against Canada or the US. They specifically mention in this article they are fine with it.
It's funny that the IIHF cares so much when in divisions lower than the top division there's regularly games like 20-0. Kazakhstan beat Iceland 63-0 once (Antropov had 20 goals in that game).
That's not accurate at all, you're using an example from a youth tournament from 20+ years ago.
The current IIHF division system is actually pretty good at providing each team with opponents at their own level, since it has quite a lot of tiers. For example in the 2019 (the latest) Division 2A tournament there was one 7-0 game, which is pretty typical, but all teams ended up between 11-22 goals both for and against in five games, which is also typical. Normal hockey numbers, nothing outlandish.
The tiers are currently
1) Top (These teams play in the world championships)
2) Division 1A (Kazakstan, Belarus, Slovenia, South Korea... Countries that you might be able to place on a hockey map, these occasionally make the world championships)
3) Division 1B
4) -> Division 2A, this is China
5) Division 2B
6) Division 3
7) Division 4 (which was only formed in 2020 and hasn't actually played yet).
South Korea has been a Division 1A team for a decade and has actually qualified for the World Championships once on their own.
China is two tiers below that, and considering that olympic level teams are really a full tier above the normal top level teams, that puts China four tiers below their opposition.
Absolute massacres could happen.
Which would be great because F China.
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Korea fdid not face any teams with any NHL players and had a considerable amount of ex-NHL players plying for them. Also Korea had more prep time as there was no Covid-19, so how they were not able to squeeze one win was beyond me despite the IIHF doing their best to setup a koren win
The Korean roster, with its 27 cumulative games of NHL experience and six Canadians, was supposed to be a medal challenger...lol.
They played in a tough Group A against Canada, Czech, and Switzerland. The Canadian roster was almost entirely ex-NHLers (e.g. Derek Roy, Rene Bourque, Chris Kelly, Maxim Lapierre, Mason Raymond, Ben Scrivens, etc.) and they only beat the Koreans 4-0.
If you were watching those games, the Koreans looked outclassed, but no worse than a nation like Latvia or Norway. The best domestically developed Korean players (e.g. Sang Wook Kim and Ki Sung Kim) looked solid and could keep up with the non-NHL Canadian pros. It's a hugely impressive result for country that essentially developed an entire hockey program in 10 years (with the help of head coaches and ex-NHLers, Jim Paek and Richard Park). Their Canadians weren't mercenaries either...a mercenary wouldn't have been playing in the country for 5-10 years prior to the Olympics.
China has had seven years since the Olympics were announced, and 10 years since they submitted the bid. In the same amount of time that South Korea had to prepare, they've assembled a team of Canadian/American mercenaries, hired an Italian head coach with only two years of head coach experience in a competitive professional league, and they've produced just a handful of domestic players that are good enough to be good VHL (Russian AHL) players.
China's efforts are the complete opposite of South Korea's and hopefully they're forced to be embarrassed by the Big 6 nations in 2022.
The Korean roster, with its 27 cumulative games of NHL experience and six Canadians, was supposed to be a medal challenger...lol.
They played in a tough Group A against Canada, Czech, and Switzerland. The Canadian roster was almost entirely ex-NHLers (e.g. Derek Roy, Rene Bourque, Chris Kelly, Maxim Lapierre, Mason Raymond, Ben Scrivens, etc.) and they only beat the Koreans 4-0.
If you were watching those games, the Koreans looked outclassed, but no worse than a nation like Latvia or Norway. The best domestically developed Korean players (e.g. Sang Wook Kim and Ki Sung Kim) looked solid and could keep up with the non-NHL Canadian pros. It's a hugely impressive result for country that essentially developed an entire hockey program in 10 years (with the help of head coaches and ex-NHLers, Jim Paek and Richard Park). Their Canadians weren't mercenaries either...a mercenary wouldn't have been playing in the country for 5-10 years prior to the Olympics.
China has had seven years since the Olympics were announced, and 10 years since they submitted the bid. In the same amount of time that South Korea had to prepare, they've assembled a team of Canadian/American mercenaries, hired an Italian head coach with only two years of head coach experience in a competitive professional league, and they've produced just a handful of domestic players that are good enough to be good VHL (Russian AHL) players.
China's efforts are the complete opposite of South Korea's and hopefully they're forced to be embarrassed by the Big 6 nations in 2022.
imagine if CP was as positive whenever the flames receive a drubbing as the korea apologists on this forum are when korea gets clapped in the olympics llol
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"Half the GM's in the league would trade their roster for our roster right now..." Kevin Lowe in 2013
I find it interesting that they didn’t start an intensive development and training program the minute they were awarded the games. It’s happened before in other sports and when they put that kind of effort in they had respectable performances.
Communist countries since the cold war have focused their intensive development on niche or individual sports where there is little funding or commercial value with decades of sporting culture in the west. There is no way they could have built something to be a competitive hockey program.
