Granted I had the stress-free experience of watching those games already knowing the outcome, but I didn’t see that much struggle outside of struggling to beat streaky hot goaltenders with an abundance of quality scoring chances. Gudlevkis played an absolutely ridiculous game, turning what should have been a 6-1 game into a squeaker. Latvia had only a handful of legit scoring chances and their one goal came on a gimmick play. The game against the Finns was tight, but they were probably the 2nd best team in the tourney (might well have made the final if Rask hadn’t been too sick to play in the semi). Austria was a blowout, and Norway was the first time the guys played together.
Well, maybe not. Most of the other countries’ best players are in the NHL, too.
People forget Canada won silver the last time NHL players WEREN’T (mostly) in the Olympics, finishing a penalty shot from gold - because the NHL was eating up all the good players from everywhere. Canada also won silver in 1992.
Yeah, but the Russian KHL has signed, and will continue to sign a lot of top-notch players. Canada will indeed be “boned” in the next Olympics if the NHL can’t come to an agreement.
I’m not sure what percentage of top Russian players are in the KHL versus the NHL, but there’s still a lot of Russian talent playing in North America, it seems. The KHL is signing North American has-beens and never-weres and they’re succeeding; it cannot be THAT good a league.
Russians sweep the 50k! They must be going nuts. Miracle on Snow?
Was hoping Noah H would end up better. A medal was probably unrealistic, but a top 10 seemed with reach.
Brian
A bit late to the party here, but out of the 4 events in the team competition, a team could only make a substitution in 2 of the events for the free program. Russia chose to substitute in the pairs and dance events (they could not substitute in the mens, as they had only one man qualify). Canada chose to substitute in the pairs and mens (As they were the first two events in the competition and the athletes had less time to rest and train before the single events. The US chose to substitute in the men (A good call, considering Jeremy Abbott’s performance), and the women.
As an avid Pens fan, Dan f’n Bylsma happened. They dominated in the round robin using an aggressive forecheck against defensively weak teams (Pens during the regular season), then when they meet the first defensively stout team – when it finally counts – they changed up strategy to a passive forecheck, they didn’t make adjustments, and they used the most asinine and arrogant in-game roster decisions possible. Dan had home-ice last change substitution in both Canada and Finland games, and he decided to give the “visiting” coach the matchups they wanted – like Kessel vs. Toews – because Bylsma doesn’t do matchups. Looked exactly like Pens and Bruins series in last years NHL playoffs.
The stuff Parise and others said after the game were very subtly not kind to Dan, and there’s multiple reports that he lost the bench halfway through the Finland game and they started doing whatever they wanted.
It sucks, too, because Bylsma could be one of the best coaches in hockey, but he simply never changes strategy, never adjusts, and never thinks he’s wrong.
Bylsma’s coaching is being widely panned in the Canadian press. He’s normally out of the radar here, being in Pittsburgh, but your perception of him is essentially what observers here were amazed to see. He was horribly outcoached by Mike Babcock in the semifinal. I mean, it’s not easy to coach against the best defense ever put on ice and you can kind of understand that, but the team was completely lost in the bronze medal game, and that’s on coaching.
What I found weird was that he seemed to abandon… well, *to abandon the American style of hockey itself. * American hockey is, traditionally, fast hockey, 200-foot hockey that places enormous emphasis on speed, unending movement, speed, more speed, and relentless aggression, and then some more speed. American-style hockey is a young man’s sport that tests the endurance of the opposition. Skate skate skate skate skate. The team I saw play Canada was nothing like that; they were weirdly tentative and didn’t seem to want to stretch the opposition out at all, despite being a team whose talents lay there. One writer called the Canada game “the largest margin of victory in the history of 1-0 games” - even at the end there seemed to be no urgency to score. Again, that’s against the mightiest D of all time, but Jesus, why weren’t they trying? Well, Jonathan Quick was trying. It should have been 4-0 but he was money.
And they said so in the press; I can find quote after quote of players saying “we held back, we were passive.” Jesus, why?
The Finland game was a travesty. It was more of the same but worse. I was baffled. I could not understand what they were trying to do.
On a larger note, now some people are criticizing the entire U.S. Olympic team:
I really do not understand this criticism, and I’m not even American:
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While the U.S. overall performance was not as good as in Vancouver, that’s in large part because Vancouver was either the best or second-best the USA has ever done, depending if you count by total medals or golds.
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The criticism that “well, it’s because of new sports we won as many as we did” is absurd. That’s true of most countries. The article points out that Canada won more golds than the USA, but many Canadian golds were in events that have been recently introduced to the Olympics so how can you criticize that and then credit another country without accounting for the same thing?
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The number of medals won in a winter Olympics is by its nature going to be quite variable. There aren’t that many events, and many of the new events are prone to weird and unpredictable results.
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The USA does great in the Olympics. You have to consider ALL the Olympics; it’s silly to just look at Winter Games. The USA is almost always tops at the Summer Games. It stands to reason countries like the Netherlands, where they basically do one sport, or Norway or Canada will do unusually well at Winter Games, but are they beating American athletes at Summer Games? Nope.
That’s a weirdly whiny article. The only real standouts in the medal counts were (1) the utter Dutch domination of long track speed skating. I mean, they’re always dominant, but they took it to another level entirely in Sochi. The American speed skaters did truly suck and it’s not clear why, but (lack of) elevation might have something to do with it. And (2) the Canadian medal surge from Vancouver was mostly maintained, something that really wasn’t guaranteed.
Other than that, the Russians got the usual home team boost on top of their typically strong performance, and Norway won umpty-seven medals in cross country and biathlon like they always do, I expect because Norwegian women give birth on skis and the infants have to learn to keep up if they want to suckle. No real surprises there.
And it’s weird because the majority in Pittsburgh still support him, even after 5 years of playoffs that end exactly like this Olympics for USA. It’s not that they lose – Lord Stanley is one of the hardest trophies to win in all sports, for a reason – but that they just flame out, do dumb shit over and over, and never adapt, all the while wasting the prime years of two of this generations greatest players. Hopefully this brings national exposure to both Shero and Bylsma (Shero takes no criticism for turning a Crosby/Malkin led team into Nashville North – grind the suckers down!) but somehow I doubt it will.
And it was incredible to see Crosby used effectively, for once. Even though he didn’t have the numbers, and even though they never quite figured out his winger situation, he was absolutely dominate in the two elimination games. He was everywhere, doing everything, and as the team got more comfortable with him he started to make those WTF passes that don’t even seem possible. His goal was gorgeous, where he poked checked it to himself in the defensive zone, blew past everyone in the neutral zone, and deked the King himself.
I think speed skating was a disappointment, only one medal (short track men’s relay)
I was hoping (but not expecting) better in XC or Nordic Combined (hey, we got a medal before). Or women’s ski jumping.
Alpine was OK, as well as sliding (bobsled and skeleton, luge not so much). 1st 2-man bobsled medal in 50+ years.
Brian
Your points are well taken, but number 2 needs a bit of clarification. The article was specifically referring to brand-new sports, not to new-ish or relatively new ones. (Moguls has been around for twenty years, hasn’t it?)
The Americans won five gold medals in events that did not exist in Vancouver–three of the four slopestyle events plus the two ski halfpipes. Take away those five and the country is left with just four gold medals–one in snowboard halfpipe, two in alpine skiing, and one in ice dancing.
I don’t think any other country won more than two gold medals in events entirely new to these Games. Their totals would have been only marginally impacted.
So if not for adding those the USA would have had a grand total of FOUR gold medals–that is, one fewer then Belarus. Think there wouldn’t have been calls for heads to roll with that result?? The mind boggles. And the powers that be in American Olympics are thanking their lucky stars for slopestyle and ski halfpipe–
OTOH, if the new events weren’t added, there probably would have been more money available in the US Olympic budget for the Snowboard Slalom events, in which case Vic Wild might not have left for Russia, and those two golds might have belonged to the US.
Too many “What Ifs” when you start changing the events around.
Actually, Snowboard Slalom was a new event; they only had Giant Slalom in past Olympics.
Even without the new events (and keep in mind that USA swept the podium in one of them), I doubt USA Skiing, which I assume was in charge of Olympic snowboarding, would have put money into snowboard slalom - does it put any money into halfpipe? I think the real problem is, there is no support from the public in the USA for “snowboard alpine.” Look at this year’s X-Games; the only snowboard events were Snowboarder X (which I think is another name for Snowboard Cross), Big Air, and halfpipe.
Only one of which was an older event. But ok …5 gold medals. Whee!
I think all the US winter sports resources should be thrown into one thing: the race for US Olympic gold in curling in 2018!
How much do the sports budgets come from the USOC and how much from their individual national associations or federations or whatever?
OK, what if heads do roll because of low medal counts? How do you change focus?
I mean, if medal counts are what you want, then you have to focus on the medal-dense events. For the Winter games, that’s mostly cross-county/biathlon, and short-track/speed skating.
I feel pretty confident that nothing in the US is going to make us more interested in the cross-country and biathlon events.
And I’m pretty sure heads are already getting ready to roll within the US Speed Skating camp.
Oh, I’m not arguing with you. (Though I’d add that alpine skiing and freestyle are pretty medal-dense as well.)
I’m just pointing out that the handful of new events for 2014 changed the “narrative” for the US experience at Sochi.
“Well, it was a pretty good Olympics for Team USA, all things considered”–that, the article linked by RickJay notwithstanding, seems to be the general consensus of what I’m reading.
Without the medals provided by these new events, in which the US did disproportionately well and won a large number of golds, the narrative becomes “OMG we couldn’t even beat Belarus!” or “We’re number Twelve!”
Big difference in how things are perceived.