I feel like I had a lot of my facebook friends comment about the Olympic Hockey tournament. Which is awesome and I was glad to see the support of hockey for 2 weeks. But I feel like most of them are not paying the NHL much heed.
I loved every minute of Olympic hockey. It was amazing. The joy being unemployed was that I got to catch every game. What's not to love about that? Both the women's and men's tournaments had great moments and both feature the same gold medal game; Canada vs the USA. In both Canada was victorious.
Being able to sit back and just watch hockey just about all day for close to weeks was great. As a fan of hockey it was pure joy to be able to watch that much hockey in that short a time period. I usually just get Caps games, and I love the Caps, but being able to watch a lot of hockey is great! And there are a couple of things I learned from this years tournament.
FIrst was that the smaller, NHL sized rink was not helpful for the offensive powerhouses. The USA did as well as they did due to great goal tending and good defensive play. Russia wasn't nearly as good as everyone predicted, even with all that offensive firepower, they just couldn't get going and score like they really should've. Canada, even with winning the Gold, struggled. Yes Canada steamed rolled through their Qualifier and Quarterfinal games, but they lost their first game against the USA, had a tough time with Slovakia, and it was a close overtime game against the USA to win the Gold medal.
About Russia... I have a place in my heart to blame the coaching on their poor performance. Russia struggled in this tournament and got destroyed by Canada in the quarterfinals. And I noticed something early on. Alex Ovechkin was playing out of position. He hit hard and scored a goal but he wasn't playing like Alex Ovechkin plays. And as a Caps fan who has seen every game this season, I would know. My little brother even something to me about him playing out of position. They tried to use Ovie in a Crosby type of role, hanging out around the net to put in the rebounds. Not a lot of movement from the great 8. Ovie is a roamer. He's best out in space, on breakaways and when the defense doesn't know where he's coming from and what I saw was a more stationary Ovechkin, playing role he doesn't fit.
I loved watching Belarus play. Their game against Germany was just fantastic hockey and if you missed that game (it was on after midnight) you missed an incredible display of hockey. They were close in the game against Switzerland and I was pulling for them.
I can't tell you how proud I am of Team USA. So so proud. I had no real expectations for Team USA. I know Ryan Miller is a great goalie but I didn't know he was that great. A lot of young players that I haven't seen or heard much about this season and I was so glad to see them beat Canada in the first game and continue to play well through the tournament. Yeah they lost but they still got he silver medal and that's nothing to be ashamed of. A great outing for the USA and I think they can only get better in the next four years.
Lastly I will say this; The NHL needs to let it's players be involved in the Olympics in 2014. There's no reason not to. It's good for hockey fans, and it's good for hockey. I had no idea who Jonas Hiller was before the Olympics and now I wish he was a Cap. There aren't many games on tv and I have direct tv so I don't have Versus and don't get extra NHL games. I get to see the Washington Capitals and whoever they play. On occasion there's another game being shown on Comcast and NBC has a game on Sunday from time to time so my NHL exposure, even as a diehard hockey fan is limited. It's good to see other players and it's good to see players like Peter Forsberg play again. Plus you get teams like Latvia and Belarus, who are essentially their own KHL teams. It's a win for everyone. Plus, if you eliminate NHL players, team USA will be complete garbage, Canada will be a shell of the team it was this year, and great players like Jonas Hiller won't get a place to shine for the mass audience.
The ratings for Sunday's game were through the roof... Hockey is Good!
No comments:
Post a Comment