I've been going on about Denmark, and I'm not stopping yet. They beat the US 2-1 in overtime to clinch a spot in the top 12, and it looks like they'll be taking some points with them, too. It's likely, far from certain, but likely that this year, Denmark will secure a spot in the top 8 for the first time and get to play in the world championship quarterfinals.
While beating both Finland and the US at the world champs is impressive, it's not unheard of. Each year, there are two first division championship tournaments, and the winners get to compete in the world championships the next year. Denmark won their tournament in 2002, and made their first appearance at the top level since the 1950's at the 2003 world champs in Finland. In their first championship game in 50 years, they beat the US 5-2 to send them to the relegation series. In the next round, they fought Canada to a 1-1 tie, but failed to make the top 8. By the way, that was the only game Canada didn't win that year.
The Finnish media especially has been giving a lot of credit to head coach Per Bäckman. I don't want to take anything away from his achievement, because he's been an excellent coach, but really, this isn't such a huge surprise. Most of the "small countries" at the hockey world champs always used to play a very boring trap defense, and compensate for their lack of individual skill with a lot of stick fouls. The Ukraine was especially notorious for this in the early '00s, and after the rule changes inaugurated in the NHL after the 2004-2005 lockout, a couple of those countries dropped right off the hockey map.
Denmark was never one of those. From their first days at the world champs, they played a spirited, offensive style of hockey that was totally different from the 0-1-4 clutch-and-grab of most other countries at their level. Despite some poor years in the later 00's, they hung on to a spot at the championships and occasionally gave some countries a very hard time.
These days, they have a couple of impressive NHL players. Frans Nielsen plays great for the New York Islanders, and Ottawa's Peter Regin was one of their best players in this year's playoffs, scoring a couple of goals and securing a spot on the Ottawa first line for a while. A standout player in the game against the US was the St. Louis Blues' Lars Eller. Perhaps their best NHL player is Vancouver's Jannik Hansen, who couldn't even make it to the games. A big part of the reason Denmark didn't make the Olympics was that the Olympic qualifiers were held in the middle of the NHL season.
But it takes more than a couple of NHL stars, no matter how impressively they play, and the real driving force behind Denmark's rise is their own indigenous hockey program. The third and fourth liners and the depth defensemen are playing at a much higher level than their counterparts were five or so years ago. The Danish hockey program produces bona fide players, and recently they restricted the number of foreign players on Danish teams to give their own guys more ice time. All this adds up to an impressive world champs run, and I'm delighted. As I said before, I've been a big fan of Denmark ever since they got to the world championships because of their fearless play, and this is a great time to be a Team Denmark fan.
Sadly, there are still serious flaws in the way the Danes play. Their team defense is somewhat mediocre, and they have the worst penalty kill in the entire tournament. In the second round, they'll meet up with Russia and Slovakia, and that might get ugly. Still, they're playing excellent hockey, so who knows how far they'll go?
A particularly delightful aspect of this Danish triumphal march is one I alluded to earlier on my Finnish-language blog. The Finnish media, and Finnish hockey pundits and players both, often complain about having to play against the "small countries". The games are just a waste of time, these countries shouldn't be allowed at the games, and so on, and so forth. Of course, they completely miss the fact that if the IIHF didn't allow silly "small countries" at the games, Finland would never have made it in. Now that Finland is teetering on the brink of the relegation series, maybe the Finnish media will finally shut up about "having to play these games". And that's a victory for hockey.
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