Team Canada tried that crap in Turin and embarrassed themselves.
Then they went back to taking the best players and have won Gold ever since. The best players in the country should be representing it, they know what's on the line and have the willingness/ability to play roles if necessary.
Do you really think Evan Bouchard can play a shut-down D role and the PK as well as Travis Sanheim? Or a coach would be as confident sending Cole Caufield over the boards to protect a lead against McKinnon’s line as Brock Nelson?
What - if any - difference do you think there should be between selecting an all-star team and building a roster for a best-of tournament?
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Originally Posted by fotze
If this day gets you riled up, you obviously aren't numb to the disappointment yet to be a real fan.
This sham is the equivalent of the NBA cup don’t think many care who wins or will celebrate. Maybe McDavid will come with champagne like LeBron and clown himself.
I was thinking last night, this may be his best opportunity to actually win something in his career. Does it make me wrong to cheer against Canada for this reason??
Goalie maybe, they are stacked eveywhere else. Best centers in the tournament, best dman.
Canada is the favourite
I heard a former NHL exec talking (can't remember who it was right now) about goaltending because the host was mentioning how the USA is the best. The exec said it is strange but the last 10 goalies to win the Stanley Cup were either Russian or Canadian and it is funny that the talking heads always try to discount Canadian goaltenders.
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I heard a former NHL exec talking (can't remember who it was right now) about goaltending because the host was mentioning how the USA is the best. The exec said it is strange but the last 10 goalies to win the Stanley Cup were either Russian or Canadian and it is funny that the talking heads always try to discount Canadian goaltenders.
I think part of it is those teams showing you can win without a superstar goaltender. So Canada may not have a generational goaltender in this cycle, but also Goaltending isn't what is used to be
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Originally Posted by Locke
Thats why Flames fans make ideal Star Trek fans. We've really been taught to embrace the self-loathing and extreme criticism.
I was thinking last night, this may be his best opportunity to actually win something in his career. Does it make me wrong to cheer against Canada for this reason??
I mean I don't know. What are we cheering for?
This set up is like an all-star tournament missing a bunch of all stars.
The best way for me to describe this thing is a bunch of friendlies set up. When you don't call up your World Cup lineup, you just put guys in.
A bunch of these guys are gunning for a bigger prize in June.
The tournament will be more entertaining than the stupid ASG by a mile, that is for sure.
But it's still just an invitational tournament and I would imagine the players aren't going to be giving 110% for fear of missing out on their team's Cup run through injury.
It's really sad that there hasn't been international hockey in nearly a decade, the NHL cant work with the IIHF to put together a proper international tournament that people crave for. Since Vancouver, it will be 5 winter games outside of our timezone until 2034 in Salt Lake.
The four nations is the only avenue right now.
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It's really sad that there hasn't been international hockey in nearly a decade, the NHL cant work with the IIHF to put together a proper international tournament that people crave for. Since Vancouver, it will be 5 winter games outside of our timezone until 2034 in Salt Lake.
The four nations is the only avenue right now.
Just because nothing has happened doesn't mean you slap together crap just to appease Connor McDavid.
It's not like they are building exciting teams either, who tf wants to watch Parayko lug around.
I've said it before in other international hockey threads.
The mechanism already exists for a true best on best tournament. Every 4th year, the NHL starts its season 1 month earlier and skip the ASG. The Stanley Cup gets awarded in early May. The World Championship gets revamped into the World Cup in those quadrennial years. Complete with legitimate qualifying campaigns for smaller nations. The first two or three World Cups should be hosted in Canada/US, then some joint European hosts in future years like FIN/SWE combined, GER or maybe even Russia one day.
People act like this is a hard concept, but it's only hard because the NHL wants to control the tournament and reap 100% of the profits.
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TV ratings will tell the story of how interested Canadians are.
Im guessing they will be huge numbers.
Even bigger % wise in Sweden and Finland.
The Canadian numbers won't really show that Canadians are interested, just that it's February in Canada and there's nothing else to watch. So numbers will be just fine and mask that we don't really care that much and are well aware that team USA is going to smoke everybody.
Does one highlight mean an entire tournament now carries prestige? Is anyone talking about the 2016 world cup as a cap in a players feather?
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Exp:
People dont watch something they aren't interested in for days and days....thats pretty straight forward.
If you don't like the idea, don't watch it. Really simple and everybody is happy.
I'm simply suggesting that this will be literally nothing like all-star hockey as has been absurdly stated, the hockey will be top notch as is normally the case when players represent their country, and it will be quite heavily watched.
The other thing is it will put millions into the HRR bucket....raising cap limits next year.
Team Canada tried that crap in Turin and embarrassed themselves.
Exactly. This is idiocy.
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Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
Do you really think Evan Bouchard can play a shut-down D role and the PK as well as Travis Sanheim? Or a coach would be as confident sending Cole Caufield over the boards to protect a lead against McKinnon’s line as Brock Nelson?
This comment is ridiculous. First, Bouchard is at most your 7th D on this roster - the issue is not including Noah Dobson, Dougie Hamilton, or Doughty in favour of - at this level - plugs like Parayko and Sanheim. You do not need shut down PK defensemen at this level. Dobson had 70 points last year and is perfectly capable of PK1, and that's after Pietrangelo, Toews, Theodore... all these guys routinely play significant minutes against the top of opposing rosters.
The suggestion that you'd be matching lines against MacKinnon with Cole Caufield OR Brock Nelson, rather than Auston Matthews or Jack Eichel, is absurd. No, you bring Caufield because when you get a third period power play in a one goal game he is a one-shot scorer who can credibly say, "yes, I'm about to shoot this puck, and it doesn't matter if you know that because you can't stop it anyway". That's not Brock Nelson, it's not Chris Kreider (who is a good finisher but is a supporting player), and it's not Vinny Trochek.
Same thing goes for Bedard. Are you playing him against Auston Matthews? No. But you can play him against Dylan Larkin and (apparently Trochek, Nelson and Kreider), and it's very possible he just goes out there and breaks the game open without warning, because he has that in him. That ceiling simply does not exist for Hagel, Cirelli or Jarvis - there are maybe 10 guys in the league who can go into "ah, I see, so there's just really nothing we can do about this guy" mode on a given night. If you have such a player available to you, BRING HIM.
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