The XXII Olympic Winter Games - Sochi 2014

Russia needs a teardown of its program starting at the minor level. Mostly every player they ever produce plays the same way, and when is the last time they had a stud two-way d-man? Zadorov looks good but who knows how he develops.

wprager wrote:Finland lost Barkov.  Fillpula, both Koivus and now Barkov.  They are done.

Finland is never done, they always find a way to medal

Ev wrote:Russia needs a teardown of its program starting at the minor level. Mostly every player they ever produce plays the same way, and when is the last time they had a stud two-way d-man? Zadorov looks good but who knows how he develops.

Markov is pretty solid and I think a little underrated overall but he's getting on. Gonchar would have been a better selection then a lot of the guys chosen as well.

A guy like Radulov is put above and beyond a lot of guys on that team as well because he plays at home. Anyways, overall the Russian's are inferior to a lot of nations for the simple fact they play politics time and time again.

What pisses me off is Markov and Emelin having an early rest

worst thing ever to happen to Russian hockey is the KHL.

Karlsson is a beast.

Karlsson might be the best player on the planet but a lot of people refuse to believe that. Crosby is the best for sure at this point but if Karlsson doesn't get injured I question whether he would be right now or not.

Gotta believe Fins will beat the swedes. Avenge 2006, get back for the 'russia will win' comment from the swedes.

Also, that must really be tough for the russians today. Stacked team bows out on home soil in the quarters. That's rough. But it's evident, politics rule the day. They need to get a new philosophy and new coaching staff in.

They wanted to beat NHLers with KHLers, simple as that. They failed and failed hard.

NEELY wrote:They wanted to beat NHLers with KHLers, simple as that.  They failed and failed hard.

I don't agree with this because the team had pretty much all their NHL talent. Unless you just mean the TOI given to Rad and Kov

Coaching, development, w/e, ice time. I should rephrase it... Russian's wanted to do it the old school Russian way and it failed.

What was up with starting varlamov instead of bob?

the only guys right now that hold a candle to what Karlsson is doing are Kessel and Doughty. Doughty has been eye-openingly good.

Sweden - Finland is an interesting match-up. Finns have been playing way better than the Swedes this tournament, but Sweden I think fairly notoriously plays down to its opponents.

If the Swedes get their blood boiling against a rival team and guys like Sedin and Eriksson get going, then Sweden can win it based on fire-power. If they continue to play lackadaisically or on the perimeter, the Rask and the Finns can hold them off and there are enough possibilities for miscues on the Swedish back-end for Finland to get a goal or two.

Definitely a game to watch.

SpezDispenser wrote:the only guys right now that hold a candle to what Karlsson is doing are Kessel and Doughty.  Doughty has been eye-openingly good.

He is the best over-all defenceman in the world when he wants to be. The good news is he plays like it in big games, which is why he has a Cup, Gold medal, and WJC gold -- though obviously he has played with some pretty good teams. The bad news is he can seem pretty disinterested over long stretches in the regular season. I'd say the good outweighs the bad though.

When he's really on his game, he brings a rare mix of gamebreaking offence and poised, calm defence (which separates him from someone like Subban IMO).

I was gonna say the same about Karlsson - as in, it's a very good thing for us to be able to see how he handles the huge pressure of the Medal games coming up for him and Sweden. In any event, this will be a good thing for Ottawa as Karlsson gets more and more experience in big pressure games.

Doughty plays the exact same way as Ray Bourque, mirror image IMO. Big game player.