EHM The Blue Line

The World Juniors Championship starts in about 30 minutes. Unfortunately I don't think anyone is showing the games here in the US, but TSN is showing some of them on their web site. I plan to watch them there at work.

I think once again the NHL and Versus are missing an opportunity to sell the game of hockey here in the U.S. by showing the great talent of these young kids and future NHL stars.

Hmm, looks like TSN is blocking the feeds to only Canadian residents. Darn them!

Sverige Television have the rights to it but they are only showing the games involving Sweden... as they always do...

I don't know but you can maby stream the games on http://www.svt.se

USAhockey.com has audio feeds for all US games. I'm listening right now. I'll try that link for the Canada-Sweden game later today.

It looks like RDS.ca is streaming the games live! It's in French but they aren't blocking it to only Canadian viewers.

Hmm looks like Center ice has USA v Germany on today at 9am... here. I'll have to see if they have any others planned and catch some games, I didn't think to look for games on that early

Yeah, I don't have the Center Ice package, but they are showing all US games. If they were showing all WJC games I might be tempted to get it.

Look for US vs Canada tomorrow at 1pm EST. I'll be watching it in French

Well Canada has a shutout streak of about three and a half games including the last tournament...Good to see the kids responded after their ugly loss against Sweden the other day.

What's the deal with Belarus beating Finland and Germany beating the US? Moreover, what's the deal with US teams coming into tournaments favoured or considered contenders and then failing to pull together as a team and playing weak hockey (or baseball, or basketball...)?

US should have beaten Germany, and by all accounts it sounded like they played a good game, but just couldn't convert on power plays. Also, the German goaltender stood on his freakin' head. The winner in OT was a bit of a fluke that the US goaltender should have had. Maybe the US was worrying too much about the Canada game and overlooked Germany.

As to what the deal is with US teams in tournaments, I think it's different for each one. Some, like basketball and baseball, just don't take the tournaments seriously, or think that they are really the best in the world at that sport and don't give 100%, almost a sense of entitlement and see the tournament as a vacation. In hockey or soccer, I don't think we have that attitude, but I think in the case of the World Cup, Bruce Arena just didn't know how to coach the team he had. We'll see about the US WJC team. But in general, not getting your players to play well or "gel" as a team I think is a coaching/management issue. I think a well coached team of lesser talent will beat a more talented team with bad coaching 9 times out of 10. It's why it's called a team.

GER-MA-NY!!! Oh man that hurts.That is a bit of an upset. But one of those seems to happen to American teams at every WJC (Suisse last year). The American teams seem to have a bit of an issue gelling and getting together in these tournaments lately. Funny, since many of them have played together in the American Hockey program for quite some time before this. Now maybe on different college teams but the program in the USA brings them together for camps alot during their teenage years.

Gelling can be a coaching issue, however, in this case I do not think that is the USA problem. The problem is adjusting to new ice....oh and a hot bloody goalie.
Really, I think this is a one-off for Germany.

Germany won their second in a row, albeit against the relatively weak Slovakian team (relative to the 'big boys' in the tourny); the US lost their second in a row to Canada, which is no big surprise, to be honest.

I'm not convinced that it's a sport-relevant issue with US failure in international tournaments. As much as a game like basketball is overloaded with selfish, egotistic players who can't play together as teammates, it's an issue with every team (and even individual -- Bode Miller) sport the US participates in. I can understand that a country would have certain sports that they should succeed at but fail for whatever reason (ie Canada in Turin) but it's been a pathological issue for the States for a number of years now...

Just to keep this on topic, I think the US loss to Canada looked worse on the scoreboard than it actually was. The 4th goal was a penalty shot (brain fart by Jack Johnson by throwing his stick), the 5th goal shouldn't have counted as the net was off the moorings before the puck crossed the line, and the 6th goal was an empty netter. I think the US outplayed Canada in the second and third periods but because of stupid mistakes (I'm looking at you Johnson) and bad calls Canada broke the US back. I think the US is finally finding it's stride, but unfortunately too late to be a factor in the tournament. They dug themselves a pretty deep hole.

I'm happy to see Germany doing well, I always love it when an underdog team does well like the Swiss in Torino.

But Thundercleese, I'm curious to know what your theory is on why the US does so poorly in international sports? I assume you are getting at something but I'm not clear on what that is.

I have a feeling that some of it is more appearance than actual failure. If my memory serves me correctly, I believe the US was second in the medal count in Torino. That means we must have won something. I also think it wasn't too long ago (2004) that the US actually won gold in the WJC.

I think the expectations of the media and possibly the fans are that the US should always be a contender. Usually they are. But when they fail, it's a much bigger story and gets much more attention than if they live up to the expectations. "The US won, well they should have, big deal." Some of this I think is due to the fact that better athletes are coming from more countries than before. Just take basketball for example. And the US just can't dominate these sports like they used to because the overall development of these sports in other countries has raised the level of competition across the board. I don't think the US athletes are declining, I think the rest of the world is getting better at sports we used to dominate in. And I think this is a good thing. Is there some level of hubris? Probably, but I think it's more along the lines of media hype and expectations of an era gone by than an actual failure or decline of US athletics.

And Bode Miller is an idiot.

noctambulist wrote:the 5th goal shouldn't have counted as the net was off the moorings before the puck crossed the line

Well, if we're going to pick the goals apart, the 2nd US goal shouldn't have counted either, there was definitely goalie interference.

Not picking goals apart, I agree, that second goal could have been disallowed. My point was that I didn't think the score was indicative of the game. One could look at the score and say "wow, 6-3, the Canadians pounded the US", but I don't think that was what happened. It was a pretty hard fought game on both ends. In my opinion, I wish all NHL games were that fun to watch. It's great seeing guys giving it 110% for 60 minutes.

noctambulist, do you know which games RDS.ca shows/plans on showing?

Also, how do I get to their broadcasts?

They are showing just the Canada games. If you go to their web site on the home page is a link for the feed on game days listed as "Match en direct sur RDS.ca". It plays in a Windows Media Player window. Watching Canada-Germany right now.

Thanks noctam. And thanks for posting when you did, because I wanted to try to get the Canada game, but forgot it was on, and your post reminded me

noctambulist wrote:Not picking goals apart, I agree, that second goal could have been disallowed. My point was that I didn't think the score was indicative of the game. One could look at the score and say "wow, 6-3, the Canadians pounded the US", but I don't think that was what happened. It was a pretty hard fought game on both ends. In my opinion, I wish all NHL games were that fun to watch. It's great seeing guys giving it 110% for 60 minutes.

Empty net goals always make the score look better for the victors then they should be but, but I do think the Canadians were the better team and I do think they were 2 goals better, did the Canadians pound the US, absolutely not.

I agree whole heartedly that I love watching these kids give it there all vs what sometimes happens at the pro level.

noctambulist wrote:But Thundercleese, I'm curious to know what your theory is on why the US does so poorly in international sports? I assume you are getting at something but I'm not clear on what that is.

I'm not really sure what it is myself, which is why I threw it out there to begin with. If I had to make a guess I'd say it's arrogance though. US athletes are among the most highly-paid in the world. Olympians in the States have it much easier than Olympians in Canada, for example, in terms of available facilities and lifestyle support. It seems to me there's an attitude that if you train with the best, you are the best (which is often true, thus the US' consistent medal haul in Olympic competition). I also think there's an "America = Number 1" mentality that's existed pretty much since America has. No offense to the Americans who are reading this, and I'm not saying this is true of all US citizens or athletes, but I think there is an attitude that 'because we are American, we will win'. I might be opening a can of worms by saying this, but I think that mentality has a lot to do with the situation in Iraq, why it started in the first place, and why it's not getting fixed. The same mentality (plus poor player choice by Gretzky) is why Canada sucked so bad in men's hockey at Turin. They figured 'we're Canada, hockey's greatest powerhouse. We could've iced three competitive teams this year. I guess we don't need to put in any effort" and then 'whoops, we suck'. There's no reason a basketball team, for example, with LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony and Dwayne Wade shouldn't destroy every opponent they face by themselves unless they've decided that they don't need to try very hard because they're the best. Because America HAS been the best at so many things for so long, it's easy for complacency to kick in. You're right to say that competition has gotten stronger across the globe but I still think laziness, caused by arrogance, is to blame in a lot of cases.

On the other hand...Maybe arrogance has nothing to do with it. Maybe the arrogance is absent in national competitions and the players just don't care because they're millionaire pros who have dedicated their lives to winning a World Series or a Stanley Cup or what have you. Maybe they tune out because they're just not interested. I think that both are true, depending on the individual and the sport....

As for perception v. actually losing, I think a big part of it is (you're right), the spotlight being on a few sports and not others: US losing to Canada in the World Baseball Classic, zero wins despite fifth overall seeding in the World Cup of Soccer, Greece (GREECE!?!) defeating USA in the World Basketball Championship, Andy Roddick's destruction at the hands of Roger Federer, etc, etc. Also, there's the big, big aspect of guys who win but cheat to do it....Justin Gaitlin testing postive for steroids, Floyd Landis testing positive for steroids, the hearings before Congress, etc, etc.

As for the hockey games themselves (sorry to turn this into something else...) I don't know if it's really that good for Canada to have earned a bye. I don't know that they're as tuned into each other, top to bottom, as they could be. When it's a short tournament with players that don't usually play together, every game helps to develop chemistry, and I don't think Slovakia is going to be much of a test of teamwork. I think this year the champ will be a team that's had to fight the long way through to the final. Maybe I just don't have as much faith without Sutter behind the bench...

I don't think that Jack Johnson throwing his stick was a brainfart. There's never any reason to throw your stick during a game--something like a highstick (like touching the puck with a highstick, not smashing someone's face) is a brainfart--you always use your stick to touch the puck so it's natural to want to reach with it to bat the puck out of the air. I think Johnson showed lack of faith in his goaltender with that move.

One thing I've noticed in all of your theories, thundercleese, is that it's always the competitors fault for losing. How about the possibility that you, as nothing more than a viewer, are expecting too much of the team?

I also think there's an "America = Number 1" mentality that's existed pretty much since America has.

Of course we have that mentality. And I'm sure that if you ask all 6-and-a-half billion something people on this planet - they'll say the same thing about their country/place of residence... and it's good that they would say that.

I can't really say I disagree with much of what Thundercleese has said. I think a few of your examples don't quite fit the theory but I think what you are getting at is that overconfidence leads to losses more times than not. This I agree with, and I also agree that the US probably is guilty of that more than others. But you can look at Brazil and England in the World Cup, or your example of Canada in the Olympics and see that we aren't the only ones. In the case of sports like baseball and basketball, I think it's also the case that the players don't take the tournament seriously. We saw the US guilty of that in Nagano, and have since changed their tune from embarrassment.

That all being said (and this is where I keep this post on-topic) I don't think the U20 US Hockey Team is guilty of this. I think it would be foolish and highly unlikely that the US team would enter the WJC with a chip on their shoulders or not taking the tournament seriously especially since they know quite of few of the players on other teams from Juniors and college hockey and know from experience that there is a lot of solid competition in this tournament.

B. Stinson -- Patriotism is pretty much a worldwide thing, but you have to concede that it can get particularly fierce in the US compared to many other nations, at least in the way that the country seems to present itself. To answer your other comment ("it's always the competitors fault for losing. How about the possibility that you, as nothing more than a viewer, are expecting too much of the team?"), I don't expect much of US teams so it's certainly not that. And, yeah, it IS always the competitor's fault for losing. My expectations have nothing to do with whether or not a team wins or loses. The only thing expectations have to do with this is how disappointed people get when they expect their team to win and the team does not. If the USA got smoked in, say, a Monopoly tournament, would anyone care, or even notice? If the basketball team loses to Greece, however, it's a big deal because people have high expectations. Still, it's the competitors that lose or win, not my (or anyone else's) expectations.

noctambulist -- You're right to say the US junior team isn't guilty of this kind of thing and it'd be almost impossible for me to make a case otherwise. Last year however, coming in as strong favourites (alongside Russia), the US juniors looked very, very incapable of gelling as a team.

The expectations don't directly control a teams performance, but what I was getting at before is that it does control how good or bad those performances look. For example, you're picking apart the US trying to explain why they're playing the way they are - almost as if you expected different from them.

Basically what I'm saying is that it doesn't have to be arrogance or "America = Number 1" that's causing them to lose - it could simply be that they just aren't good enough to compete, and the high expectations of the fans are what's making that look like a shocker... which leads to them being placed under the microscope. That's why no one is talking about Slovakia or Belarus - no one is shocked by what they've done, despite them having a bad record.

batdad wrote:GER-MA-NY!!! Oh man that hurts.That is a bit of an upset. But one of those seems to happen to American teams at every WJC (Suisse last year). The American teams seem to have a bit of an issue gelling and getting together in these tournaments lately. Funny, since many of them have played together in the American Hockey program for quite some time before this. Now maybe on different college teams but the program in the USA brings them together for camps alot during their teenage years.

Gelling can be a coaching issue, however, in this case I do not think that is the USA problem. The problem is adjusting to new ice....oh and a hot bloody goalie.
Really, I think this is a one-off for Germany.

That's right on the money! Canada would have been better off playing the extra game I think. There was a big article on TSN today about the hotel they have the team shacked up in - they have a team chef! I don't think tiredness or homesickness is going to be as much a factor for this team as it might have been in other years. They'd be better off with the game to polish their play than the day off.

Cheers.