IHWC: Last thoughts

So, the world champs are over and we've had a week to take a breather. Here's some concluding thoughts on the tournament.

We picked Canada to win, and they finished in seventh place. So that didn't go so well. However, I'm claiming credit on one point: unlike just about everyone else, we didn't pick Russia to win. I say this because there was a reason. I didn't think the Russians wanted their third medal in a row badly enough, and the way they played the tournament bore it out. They got to the final by playing consistently: in every game, they made the minimum effort required to win. In the final, they ran into a country prepared to do way more than the minimum, and lost. The same thing happened at Vancouver.

Head coach Bykov is leaving Team Russia, and it may be for the best. There's no denyning that he's changed Russia from a lackadaisical collection of skilled players to an international juggernaut, but it hasn't quite clicked yet. They're still a long way from the big red machine of a few decades ago, and in my opinion, one of the crucial differences is in the mentality. Bykov's squad has had real trouble showing up for big games. The ultimate humiliation was their awful start against Canada at Vancouver, but the same thing happened in Germany against the Czechs. In fact, despite the lopsided eventual numbers, it nearly happened against Finland; if the Finnish power play wasn't so amazingly rubbish, made even worse by coach Jalonen's inexplicable decision to insert a new player into the number one power play, Finland might have beaten the Russians the same way the Czechs did. As it is, though, Finland finished the tournament with the second-worst offensive. Only Kazakhstan scored less goals, and they were relegated. So that, as they say, is that. Recall, also, the world champs final in Canada against the home team, where the Russians almost gave the game away in the first two periods and had to mount an almost unimaginable comeback to win the game.

The reason I picked Canada to win was precisely this difference in mentality. While the Russians seem to stumble out of the gate in all their big games, the Canadians rarely suffer from this. What I didn't reckon with was that Mark Messier's first foray into general managering would be such an unmitigated disaster. As I said, the excuses are ready: Canada had only one olympic player and so on. They can hide behind that if they want, but really, their lack of Olympians should be a strength, not a weakness. Instead of sending guys jaded from Olympic success, they picked a young, hungry team that should have done much better. In my opinion, the fact that Corey Perry was their only Olympian makes the quarterfinal elimination all the stranger. And besides, looking at how Perry played, more players like him wouldn't have helped at all.

Speaking of Canada and the Olympics, this gives me an opportunity to poke fun at Canadian hockey again. One of the fundamental myths of Canadian hockey superiority is that while the "Euros" are in it for the money, Canadians play for the glory of Canada, hockey and the Stanley Cup. Remember how a few years back you couldn't read a story about NHL captains without someone brandishing the old adage about European captains? The claim was that no European captain had ever won the Stanley Cup, or would ever win the Stanley Cup, because Europeans just play for the paycheck and don't really care about hockey. Niclas Lidström put that one away, but the fundamental prejudice behind it remains.

That's why it was so funny to see the silly little storm-in-a-teacup over Crosby's refusal to play at the world champs. Apparently the kid didn't want to, saying via his agent that it was "more appropriate" for him to relax and prepare for the next season. Funnily, teammates Malkin & Gonchar didn't seem to think so, and turned up to represent Russia. Some people had the nerve to say that Crosby's refusal was disrespectful toward Hockey Canada, which sent everyone scrambling to the wünderkind's defense. Of course he doesn't have to play some stupid Mickey Mouse tournament! He has his day job to think about! It's fine by me; it's just somewhat amusing that Russian players put their national team before their summer vacation, the anointed messiah of Canadian hockey doesn't, and still Europeans are somehow less "principled" than Canadians. The doublethink required to be a Canadian hockey bigot is remarkable. Ceterum censeo, next time someone mentions running up the score, ask them why it doesn't apply to Team Canada. They beat Norway 12-1 this year.

Anyway, for me, the biggest disappointment of the whole tournament was Team USA. They, too, had a young team, fresh off the motivating mix of success and disappointment that is an Olympic silver medal (we know). Finland was in the same opening round group, and given how puny Finland's defense corps was, I fully expected the Americans to beat the snot out of Finland. They didn't, because incredibly enough, their offense was even worse than Finland's defense. The only thing I can say about the Americans' tournament is EPIC FAIL.

I expected the Americans and Finns to be in the medal games, and neither made it. Jukka Jalonen's Team Finland continues to fall short of even my pessimistic expectations. I'm pretty sure one of the reasons they lost to the Czechs was that like me, they too expected that Finland would win. The numbers would have been much uglier had the Czech offense not consisted almost entirely of unscreened wristshots. I find Jalonen's team to be a little confusing. On the one hand, there's a real attempt to play offensive hockey, even a puck possession game at times, which is a great change from the mind-numbing neutral zone trap we all got used to in the last ten years. It was long a mantra of Finnish hockey that Finland can only win through great defense and spectacular goaltending, and when every head coach fielded the same old 1-2-2, it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. So in this sense, Jalonen is great for Finnish hockey.

What I have trouble with is two things. First, and least, the motivational aspect, which was highlighted by several commentators on Finnish state television. Jalonen's team also suffers from spectacularly bad play in big games, even compared to their usual level. The question has been raised whether Jalonen has the leadership to really get the team to give its all when it counts the most. More importantly, I can't wrap my head around the way he picks a team. As near as I can tell, he's totally dedicated to fielding the worst defense ever on a Finnish national team, and suceeded in doing so again this year. Granted, this is better than Erkka Westerlund's system of picking 20 wingers, three centermen and five D and rolling up lines with a pair of dice, but still, I don't understand what he's doing. Then again, I don't even know who actually picks the Finnish national team. Is it Jalonen? Or does our "GM" actually do something? I have to admit I don't even know, so I'm not sure whose fault this all is. Several signs point at Jalonen, though, including the strange inclusion of Antti Miettinen on all of his teams, despite his notorious uselessness on the national team, and an odd penchant for seemingly random players from the Finnish league.

On that note, I do have to gloat on two points about the Finnish team. Juhamatti Aaltonen, this year's European league wildcard, was just as useless as I said he would be in my Finnish-language preview. Aaltonen, touted as a "sniper", managed one (1) goal in the entire tournament, and that was a superfluous empty-netter against Slovakia. A second point is Miettinen's linemate. As I've said, before the tournament, Veikkaaja, the sports supplement (sort of) of one of Finland's biggest daily newspapers, was headlined "Savior". On the cover was Jussi Jokinen. Left off the Olympic team for dastardly and underhanded reasons, Jokinen was now going to save Team Finland at the world champs.

Yeah, right. When Jokinen was left off the Vancouver roster, I argued that this was for two reasons: Jalonen was going to play Mikko Koivu with his Minnesota linemate Miettinen, and Jokinen was always rubbish in international play. The first wasn't the case, perplexingly, but this spring Jokinen quite decisively proved the second. The "savior" of Team Finland was, again, useless. He scored two goals against Slovakia, but in the big games, what did he manage? He took an idiotic 2+10 against Russia for a flying elbow to Sergei Gonchar's head, and three minor penalties in the decisive game against the Czechs. To top it all off, the former shootout specialist missed the net on his game-deciding penalty shot. Some savior he.

That shootout was embarassing, by the way. The Czech forwards were great, but really, as he's freely admitted himself, Vokoun is rubbish at shootouts. He stays up for way too long. All three of Finland's shooters could easily have scored. As it was, only the first guy did; the next two had wide-open nets in front of them and missed. In a way, that does sum up Finland's whole tournament.

It also brings me neatly to the most important point I have. The great thing about the tournament as a whole was the importance of the offense. This year, teams that were good on the offense won, and teams that couldn't score didn't. The low-scoring Czechs were the exception that confirms the rule, while Denmark are pretty much the posterboys. Of the big countries, Finland, Sweden, Canada and the US suffered heavily from an inability to put the puck in the net, while a fearless offense landed Denmark a historical place in the quarterfinals. Switzerland also showed up with a much better offensive game than they ever had under Ralph Krüger, and they would have been in the semifinals if they'd only concentrated on the game, as opposed to spearing and fighting.

I fully expect the Swiss and Danes to do well next year too, while Finland may start paying a heavy price for its systemic neglect of goal-scorers in junior hockey. They may have won the world title, but the last few years have been bleak for the Czechs at the NHL draft, and worse for the Slovaks. The latter have Tomas Tatar and Richard Panik to look forward to; not only do they have awesome names, but they play up to them as well. In the longer run, though, it'll be interesting to see if Finland, the Czechs and the Slovaks can keep up with the other big countries, or if they'll sink to second tier.

All in all, though, the gap between the small and big countries is narrower now than it has ever been, and that's great for hockey. I'm already looking forward to next year.