2014 Winter Olympics Hockey Ping!
(let me know if you want on or off the ping list)
Posted on 07/23/2013 6:27:19 AM PDT by airborne
For all of us hockey fans who are tired of NFL murder stories and MLB drug stories, I offer some off season hockey news.
Here are some of the team rosters of the countries who look to be contending for Winter Olympic medals.
http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=678655&navid=DL|NHL|home
Canada - Crosby, Toews lead Canada's Olympic camp roster
http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=678667&navid=DL|NHL|home
Russia - Ovechkin highlights Russian Olympic camp roster
http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=678658&navid=DL|NHL|home
Finland - Selanne aiming for sixth Olympics
http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=678698&navid=nhl:topheads
Sweden - Lundqvist, Backstrom earn invites to Sweden camp
http://www.nhl.com/ice/news.htm?id=678711&navid=nhl:topheads
(let me know if you want on or off the ping list)
IIRC, some of the games in the Olympics held in Italy started at 5:00 a.m. ET. I wonder the game times for this Olympic season.
http://www.sochi2014.com/en/games/sport/olympic-games/schedule/
I found this...
The 2014 Sochi Olympics? Not so television friendly. At least for the West Coast.
There’s an 8-hour time difference between Sochi and New York. So the USA/Russia throw-down in preliminaries on Feb. 15 will be at 7:30 a.m. in East and 4:30 a.m. in the West. So, yeah, Spoiler Warning!
Here’s what the 2014 Sochi Olympic men’s hockey tournament schedule looks like …
But I would get up early for a good hockey game!
I’ve been known to get up at 3am to watch a tennis match live. I will do the same to watch the Olympic hockey games.
Yeah, I remember the “amateurs” who played for the old USSR. They were pretty good. For amateurs. I’ll bet they weren’t as good as army officers or factory workers or whatever job it was they supposedly held.
It’s the Olympics. Let the best athletes play. I want to see Malkin line up against Crosby, Toews against Kane, and Chara against Rask. Plus, I’d like to see the Russian team. I’ll bet there are some damn good players in the KHL.
I recently saw an interview with Mike Eruzione from the 1980 Miracle team. He said that they played a warmup exhibition against the Soviets at Madison Square Garden. Neal Broten took one of their guys into the boards, and his jersey pulled up, revealing a gun tucked in to the back of his pants!
Turns out the Soviet entourage was lousy with KGB minders, so worried were they about defections. And so low was their regard for the American team that they let a few of them suit up for this game!
Is NBC going to screw it up?
Have to admit that they did better for the summer olympics, as they streamed many of the events online. However, the ‘big’ events were not streamed live, so the videos could be shown during the evening hours on NBC channels.
I hope not, but I wouldn't be surprised if they did.
But in this construct you will never have a 1980 again and I know the Cold War is over and those animosities don't exist in the same vain.
As a Penguin fan I like watching Crosby and Malkin play no matter where or when, but I can root for them 82x per year.
I'd much rather see up and coming junior leaguers play on this world stage, not for the glory of getting the medal but for the glory of playing for their country in an event they would never play in again.
Maybe I'm too nostalgic and obviously in the minority.
We all think back fondly to that 1980 Miracle on Ice game.
But the reality is, most of the time American and Canadian college kids were getting shellacked by Soviet and Czech professionals 16-2.
Between the ‘72 Canada Cup and the ‘80 Olympics they lost only ONE GAME to a North American PROFESSIONAL team (the Winnipeg Jets, led by Bobby Hull and a bunch of Swedes)
IMO if the Soviet coach probably blew that 1980 game by pulling Vladislav Tretiak, one of the most accomplished goaltenders of his era, in favor of Boris Myshkin (who???)
My youngest son is a big Pens fan. The other likes the Blackhawks. If the Pens had a goalie, I was going to have some broken furniture in the house this year. Oh well...
I thought the Vancouver Olympics was a great way for the NHL to showcase it’s talent, and to market the game in general. They almost threw that away this past year with the lockout.
Hockey did not televise well back in the 1970s, but with modern camera technique, HD broadcast and big screen TVs with surround sound, NHL games now come across very well. The problem is that not enough people have “discovered” hockey. But when you do, you fall in love with it.
I think the trend is your friend, and I think the day will come when the NHL is more popular than the NBA. I have absolutely no use for the NBA. I can’t say what I really think of it because the moderators would pull the comment. But suffice to say, the NHL is a much much better product and with NBC Sports and the various regional packages, it will become much more popular. Having NHL players in the Olympics will only help.
Let me run this by you also. First let me say, how about my Blackhawks? I have been a fan since 1961. There were a ton of lean years, where I had to put a bag over my head. I was the unknown Blackhawks fan. Now, my point, the previous Blackhawks owner did not care about wining. Since Rocky Wirtz took over, they have hired great scouts, a good GM in Stan Bowman, hired John Mcdunough, lured Scotty Bowman and Barry Smith away from Detroit, Jamie Compon from LA. In short, they have a bunch of guys in the front office, who are very good judges of talent. This is not brain surgery, but it starts with the owner.
One thing I came away with after reading that book -- and Mike Eruzione said the same thing in an interview he did when Disney was filming the movie "Miracle" in the early 2000s -- was that the U.S. victory over the Soviets wasn't nearly as big an upset as it was originally made out to be. Several reasons for this:
1. U.S. coach Herb Brooks put together a team made up of the exact type of players he expected to match up well against the Soviets (small and fast, but stronger than their size would indicate, and in superb condition).
2. Brooks also knew that Soviets were likely to be a very complacent team, since they had been so successful for so long and really had nothing left to prove.
3. The U.S. team was described as a bunch of unknown players because they were young kids who were mostly still college-aged, but in retrospect they were a much more talented group of players than anyone gave them credit for. Thirteen of the U.S. players went on to play in the NHL, a number of them were All-Star caliber players, and five of them had long NHL careers (Neal Broten, Dave Christian, Mark Johnson, Ken Morrow and Mike Ramsey). In fact, some folks might be familiar with the scene from the exhibition game in Norway in the fall of 1979 where Brooks punished the team for their poor play by making them run skating sprints on the ice long after the game was over (even after the lights in the arena were turned off). Brooks had scheduled a series of exhibition games in Europe that fall to coincide with NHL training camps for the 1979-80 season. He knew many of his players were likely to get lucrative offers from NHL teams and leave the Olympic team if they played an exhibition schedule in North America during those months.
Go USA!
I’ve never been a fan of having the NHL interrupt its season while many of its players go off to play in the Olympics. I’m sure fans of the New York Rangers would agree with me, as they had two of their top players come back from the 2006 Olympics (Henrik Lundqvist and Jaromir Jagr) and play so poorly down the stretch in that season that it’s always been assumed that both of those guys were injured during the Olympics.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.