For starters, it wasn't. A reasonably entertaining game? Yup. Best game ever? Pure hyperbole. From my perspective, the game did not feature a lot of the things that make games exciting - goals, scoring chances, big hits, etc. There was a lot of back-and-forth but not a lot of chances either way. For me, most of the "excitement" value in the game came solely from the knowledge of what was at stake for the winner....not because the game itself was a classic.
I thought the first Canada-USA game, in the round-robin, was a better game overall. For that matter, the Canada-USA WJC final was a better game as well.
After this, I can only hope that some Canadian fans will accept that there are other very good teams out there too, and the margin between "Us" and "Them" is not as great as they seem to think it is. The pre-Olympic claims by some of how Canada could send two teams to the Olympics that would easily win gold AND silver have been proven to be ridiculous, as shown by how close Canada's one team came to not getting a medal of any color. It may be "our" game but we are not the only ones who play it well.
UPDATE: the ratings are out, and to nobody's surprise, the gold medal final is the most-watched TV program in Canadian history with an average audience of 16.2 million people (meaning that approximately 50% of all Canadians watched the entire game) and 80% of Canadians saw at least part of the game. Think about those numbers for a minute. 80%!!!
The game also scored big ratings on NBC and is was the most-watched hockey game in the U.S. since the 1980 USA-Finland gold medal game.
And a last Olympic note - last week I poked some fun at the Canadian "Own The Podium" program, calling it "Loan The Podium" for the number of Canadian medal hopes we saw go down in flames in the first week of the Games. As it turns out, things didn't go THAT badly....the goal of OTP was to win the overall medal count. That did not happen - in fact, it wasn't even close as the USA won that race with 37 medals to Canada's 26. Canada wasn't even 2nd either, as Germany ended up with 30. But on the other hand, the 26 medals beats Canada's previous best total at any Games - Winter or Summer - of 24, and the Canadian team did win 14 gold medals - 40% more than the next-best total of 10 by the Germans. (And for added reference, Canada's best gold medal total ever before was 10 at the 1984 Summer Games, which is an asterisked Games since half the world boycotted them....the best gold total at a non-boycotted Games was 7 at Barcelona in 1992, Salt Lake City in 2002, and Turin in 2006). So while they did not own the entire podium, they did own the top step of it at least. So that's a partial success anyway.
8 comments:
To further add to the medal comments.
Canada's 14 gold is a new record for most gold medals won by any country at a winter Olympics.
Alan, could you update your top six finishes chart to the end of the games? It should be quite interesting I expect.
Also, that most golds in the winter games record should have a big asterik since there have never been as many events and gold medals to win!
re: Canada's 2nd team - I disagree with you Alan - pre Olympics, I never thought it would be easy, but I think Don Cherry could have picked a 2nd team that would have medaled easily IF they had Finland's draw for example... To me the key was goaltending - Canada's goalies did not play as well as I expected.. if Luongo would have shined as Canucks fans know he can, it wouldn't have been close... BTW - IMO Canada won despite Steve Yzerman and his selection buddies... the team had too many too old/slow guys - Burke did a better job of player selection... food for thought
Ya cause we had a ton of Old guys on our team I mean Crosby is 22 and Towes is 21 and Doughty is 20 man how could Stevie Y pick all of these old farts. And I know there was Pronger and Niedermeyer but you need some experience. The Americans had Drury, Rafalski, and Langenbrunner.
Marty, which goal would Luongo want back? The deflection or the 2-0 against him with no defenseman in sight?
How many times during the Olympics did you think to yourself Jim Hughson would have been saying "Great Save Luongo"? You can't / I don't blame him for either goal... and to the other anonymous - The young guys you mentioned were team leaders by their play on the ice, and Stevie Y should have more of them (young guys) - Team speed will be even more important in Sochi - let us all pray that Bettman doesn't screw that up...
My thoughts on your thoughts....
Yes, the 14 gold medals is a record for Winter Games. And yes, those records do get easier to set the more events the IOC adds to the Games. The number of medal events has nearly doubled since 1988, so you always have to take that into consideration. Still a good achievement though. Same with the USA setting the record for most total medals - 37 medals is easier to get this year than it was 4 or 8 years ago because there's more events. But it's still a proud achievement for those countries.
As for the top-six chart, I will update that later today if I remember.
I have no problems with the Canadian roster. I thought Pronger looked old and slow in the early games, but he was a rock in the final. Everyone played their role and played it generally well, except for Brodeur and of course for Fleury, who never got to play at all. Luongo was fine....not spectacular but he wasn't required to be spectacular much either. If anyone needs to be criticized, you could point out that Crosby was completely invisible in the Germany and Slovakia games, as well as most of the USA game before the winning goal. He's going to get permanent fame for scoring the "golden goal" but in reality he did not have the kind of tournament a lot of us expected him to have.
And I still have to disagree with you, Marty....Canada's best 20 players could not manage to get themselves into the soft half of the playoff draw. USA did. Forget beating the USA, all they had to do was beat Switzerland in regulation and they couldn't even do that. So to me there is no reason to believe that players #21 to 40 from Canada could have done better.
Canada is perpetually one of the best in the world at this sport and I am damn proud of that....but I loath the arrogance that SOME Canadian fans exude when they suggest that our "B" team can beat anyone else's "A" team. It's a fact, they can't.
I have a fundamental difference with you about this A/B thing - I think the Canadian "B" team playing as a team (with M-A Fleury in goal and they would be HIGHLY motivated) could have beat the "A" team even though the A team has "better" players - The USA (with a clearly inferior team-on paper) beat the A team and as you said the Swiss team took them to the shoot out...
Post a Comment