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Four Nations

Preston said:
Doughty: "I worked my balls off this summer so that I can have a chance to play for Canada."

Fans are doing a lot of weird cartwheels in their heads trying to convince themselves that this doesn't mean anything and it's equivalent to an all-star game.

The players have been waiting for this for a long time. They are hungry.
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Hungry for cock, it seems.
 
2yr GSAx / 82 team games:

1. USA Hellebuyck 44.7
2. SWE Markstrom 24.5
*RUS Shesterkin 23.7
*USA Daccord 22.8
*USA Stolarz 22.8
*CAN Thompson 19.5
*CAN Blackwood 19.3
3. SWE Ullmark 19.0
4. CAN Montembault 18.1
*CZE Dostal 17.8
5. CAN Binnington 17.4
*USA Demko 16.1
*USA Lindgren 15.2
*USA Woll 13.6
6. USA Swayman 13.6
*DEN Andersen 13.1
7. FIN Luukkonen 12.6
*CAN Talbot 12.1
*RUS Kochetkov 11.9
*CAN Allen 10.7
*CAN Brossoit 10.7
*CAN Skinner 10.7
*CZE Rittich 10.4
8. USA Oettinger 10.3
*CZE Vejmelka 9.8
9. CAN Hill 9.4
*RUS Bobrovsky 9.2
*RUS Vasilevskiy 9.2
*RUS Sorokin 8.5
*USA Gibson 8.5
*USA Quick 8.1
*CAN Kuemper 7.9
10. FIN Lankinen 7.7
*RUS Varlamov 7.6
*CAN Ingram 7.5
*CZE Mrazek 6.8
*USA Wolf 6.6
*CAN Reimer 6.3
*USA Lyon 5.6
*USA Knight 4.8
*CAN Hofer 4.7
*USA Desmith 4.4
*CAN Greaves 4.1
*RUS Askarov 4.0
*FIN Annunen 3.9
*LAT Merzlikins 3.1
11. FIN Saros 2.4
*CAN Jarry 2.1
*CAN Levi 1.9
*USA Nedjelovic 0.4
*CAN Comrie 0.4
*USA Primeau 0.2
*SWI Schmid 0.1
12. SWE Gustavsson 0.0
 
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LeafoFaith said:
Hungry for cock, it seems.
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eminem-mask.gif


snoop-dogg-dre.gif
 
zeke said:
same lines otherwise?
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yeah looks like.

So canada has picked pretty close to the best nerdie forwards at least.

Marchand with a +7 net rating stands out as the one guy who doesn't belong statistically, but his nerdies were there back when he was first picked, and i don't think anyone doesn't want him on the team.

There are a handful of other forwards who have the nerdies to be on the team but they're all flawed and i don't think anyone's crying that any of these guys missed - Monahan +17, Hyman +15, Tavares +14, Barzal +14, Scheifele +14, Dubois +12.

Of the goalies, Monty and Binnington both deserve it by the nerdies. But Hill doesn't. The nerdies think Thompson or Blackwood deserved to be there instead - and really, the nerdies think that all of Monty/Binnginton/Thompson/Blackwood are all legit good and all comparable so it probably doesn;'t matter which one of these 4 they use.

The defense is where it's more controversial. the nerdies think Bouchard and Harley should be shoo-ins. Personally, i think Bouchard is the biggest outlier nerdie player in hockey, slotted in the absolute perfect role to maximize his nerdies, and honestly I think he's a pretty shitty dman. Harley I like better. Parayko looks the most underserving nerdie-wise but at the same time he's a) pretty solid on the nerdies and b) arguably gets the toughest usage in all of hockey.

Overall Canada picked a pretty nerdy team tbh.
 
Re: 1998 though, I'm dead serious. Losing in 1998 was probably more important to the national psyche than winning would have been. We had been told for a few generations that we were unbeatable at the game. Canadian hockey was at the pinnacle and everyone else was playing for second. Endless re runs of Paul Henderson and Gretzky to Lemieux were proof of our greatness. To have Hasek deep dick us woke the country up to how much parity there already was at the top of the game and led to another golden generation.

As to why the olympics specifically are important, you're not growing the game with 4 team tournaments from traditional hockey nations. There's a reason why the NBA owners aren't falling all over themselves to make little insular tournaments they can cash in on.
 
zeke said:
Beyond 5 or 6 nations there's zero value in having more teams compete.
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Same could have been said about basketball in 1990. Fast forward 30 years and the South fucking Sudan gave the USA a scare at the last olympics.

Yes, if you don't give a shit about growing the game, throwing the same 5-6 teams together for every tournament is all you need to know who is the best of the moment, sure. That's a good way for the game to atrophy and eventually die though.
 
zeke said:
when did olympics become the be all and end all anyways?

my best memories are still Canada Cup.
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Me too.

The Olympics were nothing when I was a kid. We knew the Soviets would win because they were "amateurs" in name only. Team Canada was made up of nameless, faceless Canadian college kids who mostly weren't good enough to have much hope of becoming NHL players (although Zarley Zalapsky became one notable exception, playing for Canada in the 84 Sarajevo Games)

The Miracle on Ice in 1980 was huge not because it was USA v USSR but because it was David v Goliath. The Soviets destroyed the NHL all stars at the 79 Challenge Cup and then a year later a group of unknown American college kids beat them. But in Canada, Olympics hockey was largely ignored.

Then, in 1998 when the NHL was allowed to send players, all of a sudden Canada's half century gold medal drought, which precisely NOBODY cared about before, became this source of jingoistic outrage. It was always phony; always a contrivance. And it's why I stated in 1998 and every day since that the Olympic gold medal in hockey is a meaningless and irrelevant achievement. We never cared before so no reason to start caring now.

The 72 Summit Series was epic, as was the 76 Canada Cup. Canada was embarrassed in the 81 Canada Cup final so Hockey Canada simply changed the format to make the final a best of 3 instead of a one game winner take all. Canada, never playing abroad since 72 and at home on the smaller ice, won the Canada Cup in 84, 87 and 91. Those tournaments were great hockey, and played by teams that had a genuine dislike for each other, even if the format was skewed in Canada's favor.

But once the Soviet Union collapsed and Russian players started arriving in the NHL, the hate was gone and tournaments like these stopped being worth watching. Without hate, you've got nothing compelling to see. That's why the All Star Game is garbage. Everybody's just playing silly buggars. I'm not expecting the 4 Nations to be war on ice either, despite the marketing.
 
zeke said:
South Sudan v USA

#neverforget
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in 15 years when they're a top 10 FIBA nation with multiple NBA players on their squad, they'll all talk about how important that game was to them.

Again, this is how the game grows internationally.
 
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