Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics thread

#476
#476
BigPapaVol said:
Good. What happened?
Posted via VolNation Mobile
Click to expand...


They won the Gold then got DQ'd for contact with team China, there was some contact but nothing intentional, gave China the Gold, Canada the Silver and team USA (who were nowhere even close to the leaders) the Bronze.
 
#478
#478
BigPapaVol said:
No on basketball. You're comparig apples and oranges. The best young hockey players were already professionals and not on the Oly team. The guys you mentioned would all be on the pro squad. It would be like taking current collegiate all stars and playing NBA all stars. Obliteration. The 80 olympics fluke wouldn't happen.
Posted via VolNation Mobile
Click to expand...

Oh, I thought you were bringing up basketball in response to my point about how it's only in football that younger players can't compete with seasoned pros. I thought we were talking about a larger issue than just the 1980 Olympic gold. Yes, that was a ridiculous fluke, and compounded by a stupid coaching decision (they pulled the best goalie in history after he gave up a fluke goal at the end of a period). But that was one game 30 years ago, and what is widely regarded as the biggest fluke/greatest upset in sports history. I don't see how that one flukey game invalidates the entire sport.

The same handful of countries win the soccer World Cup every time. The same handful of teams are in the hunt for the Stanley Cup every year. The same small group of teams are the top competitors for the Olympic hockey gold medal every time. Other than 1980, I just don't see the flukey results that you're complaining about.
 
#482
#482
Does it invalidate college basketball that Tennessee beat Kansas this year? Or football, that Appy State beat Michigan, or that Stanford beat USC as a 41 point underdog? Or boxing, that Buster Douglas knocked out Tyson? Or golf, whenever anybody but Tiger Woods wins? Fluke results happen in every sport. Talent disparties, even huge, are not necessarily by themselves decisive.
 
#486
#486
Oh, I don't like Ovechkin much either. I've just loathed Jagr for his whole career.

Can't decide whether I have a rooting interest in this game. I don't know that there's much difference in the two teams as far as the US is concerned. I guess I'd rather Finland win because I'd rather see Kiprusoff in the next game than Vokoun.
 
#487
#487
Agree, the Czechs are more dangerous to us by a long shot in my opinion.

Hoping Hank can get it done tonight, he is our best chance to not have to play Canada again.
 
#488
#488
Yeah, we need the Swedes to step up. I do not like our chances in a rematch against Canada, in a gold medal game, on Canadian soil.
 
#489
#489
With the discipline these teams are playing with, we need to settle down and play a solid end to end game or we might be working towards a Bronze
 
#491
#491
Vercingetorix said:
Oh, I thought you were bringing up basketball in response to my point about how it's only in football that younger players can't compete with seasoned pros. I thought we were talking about a larger issue than just the 1980 Olympic gold. Yes, that was a ridiculous fluke, and compounded by a stupid coaching decision (they pulled the best goalie in history after he gave up a fluke goal at the end of a period). But that was one game 30 years ago, and what is widely regarded as the biggest fluke/greatest upset in sports history. I don't see how that one flukey game invalidates the entire sport.

The same handful of countries win the soccer World Cup every time. The same handful of teams are in the hunt for the Stanley Cup every year. The same small group of teams are the top competitors for the Olympic hockey gold medal every time. Other than 1980, I just don't see the flukey results that you're complaining about.
Click to expand...

I'm not invalidating the sport. I'm talking about my distaste for a sport with such flukey results. The point about basketball is that teams with such a talent disparity would never produce such a result.

At the last olympics, the top two teams were not playing for the gold. I'm not complaining about it. I just don't care for a game that rewards fortune as much as skill. It's similar to poker in that regard. The best players will often get there, but in huge fields, the lucky just overcome their odds.
Posted via VolNation Mobile
 
#492
#492
Vercingetorix said:
Does it invalidate college basketball that Tennessee beat Kansas this year? Or football, that Appy State beat Michigan, or that Stanford beat USC as a 41 point underdog? Or boxing, that Buster Douglas knocked out Tyson? Or golf, whenever anybody but Tiger Woods wins? Fluke results happen in every sport. Talent disparties, even huge, are not necessarily by themselves decisive.
Click to expand...
We're talking about much different talent disparities.
Posted via VolNation Mobile
 
#493
#493
BigPapaVol said:
I'm not invalidating the sport. I'm talking about my distaste for a sport with such flukey results. The point about basketball is that teams with such a talent disparity would never produce such a result.

At the last olympics, the top two teams were not playing for the gold. I'm not complaining about it. I just don't care for a game that rewards fortune as much as skill. It's similar to poker in that regard. The best players will often get there, but in huge fields, the lucky just overcome their odds.
Posted via VolNation Mobile
Click to expand...

The best two teams don't usually play in the NCAA basketball title game. The best two teams don't usually play in the Super Bowl. (Arizona wasn't among the top eight teams in football two years ago, and yet they were one play away from winning a title.) Tiger Woods doesn't win every week. Again, I just don't see that the results in hockey are any more or less flukey than anything else. If hockey is a game that "rewards fortune as much as skill," then what sport isn't?
 
#494
#494
Vercingetorix said:
The best two teams don't usually play in the NCAA basketball title game. The best two teams don't usually play in the Super Bowl. (Arizona wasn't among the top eight teams in football two years ago, and yet they were one play away from winning a title.) Tiger Woods doesn't win every week. Again, I just don't see that the results in hockey are any more or less flukey than anything else. If hockey is a game that "rewards fortune as much as skill," then what sport isn't?
Click to expand...

rarely do the top two teams miss one another in the major tv sports. If they do, it's a scheduling issue or because they're on the same side of the draw. The Cardinals were as good as anyone the NFC could offer. It's not like the expansion Bucs were there, which is what happened at Lake Placid. The best teams are almost always in the final 4, and Cinderella rarely ventures that far. The couple that have simply ended up being underrated due to poor coaching or poor play, but had big time talent. Our hockey team had almost no talent.
Posted via VolNation Mobile
 
Last edited:
#495
#495
That Cardinals team went 9-7 with some seriously bad losses over the course of the season. It's only retroactively that you consider them as good as anyone in the NFC, and that's only because they flukily won the NFC tournament. They weren't the "best" team (in the sense you mean it, by some criterion other than results) in the NFC that year any more than NC State was the best team in 1983 or Villanova was the best team in 1985, or that George Mason was one of the four best teams in 2006. I could just as easily point at last three examples and say that I can't stand a sport in which such obviously undeserving teams have a chance to get so deep in its championship tournament.

And if that hockey team was so awful, how'd they go 4-0-1 in the qualifying round? How'd they beat Finland in the gold medal game? That gold medal was more than just a one-game fluke. Brooks knew he had a bunch of lunch-pail guys, so he played an ugly, grind-it-out style of hockey designed to do the football equivalent of shortening the game and running the clock -- basically the equivalent of the service academies running the triple option to minimize their talent gap. They didn't just beat one team more talented to win the gold; they beat several. And while yes, there was a lot of luck involved in the win over the Soviets, it wasn't just that. The Soviets didn't take the Americans seriously, barely practicing beforehand. The coach inexplicably yanked Tretiak (only the greatest goalie who ever lived) after he gave up a second goal. And the Soviets panicked once they were down. When I finally saw a replay of the game a few years ago, the thing that struck me was how the Soviets had no idea what to do once they were losing. They completely lost their shiat and abandoned their normal style; they didn't even know how to pull their goaltender in the final few minutes, for crying out loud. Preparation, playing as a team, knowing how to handle yourself under adversity -- all of these things are important in team sports, just like talent. Yes, that was a hugely lucky game, but the way that both the Americans and Soviets approached and played that game stacked the deck so that a lucky outcome was more likely.
 
#496
#496
Again, the NFC absolutely sucked and the Cardinals were talented enough to compete. The NC State team had two NBA players on it and an AP AA guard. There is plenty of reason for those teams to win, period. They could at least compete reasonably with every team they played. AZ did the same.

The 4-0-1 record for tha US team is absolute testament to the flukey nature of the game. The goalie goes berserk, either direction, and it nullifies everything else happening in the game, then all the gibberish regarding chippiness, traffic, forechecking etc.

The Buffalo Sabres won the NHL title with Peca and Hasek. They weren't the best team by any stretch.
Posted via VolNation Mobile
 
#497
#497
NC State may have had two NBA players, but Houston had two NBA Hall of Famers. Why didn't talent win that game? And while Sabres didn't actually win the title, Hasek is one of the five best goalies of all time. It's not luck when he nullifies everything else happening in the game. I rooted against Hasek his whole career, and yes, I used to ***** that he was the luckiest bastard in the world, but when you do it every year for ten years in a row, at some point you have to admit that it's not luck. Just like with the 1980 hockey team -- before they beat the Soviets, they pounded the Czechs (who were supposed to be really good) 7-3. That wasn't the goalie going berserk; that was just plain outworking and outplaying a better team. How many games in a row can you win and still call it a fluke?

Clearly we're arguing in circles. It just seems to me like you aesthetically don't like sports that have a goaltender, and you're writing off their impact on the game as luck. But there's no more luck in what they do than there is with just about anybody in sports. There's a reason why Ken Dryden won six Stanley Cups and Patrick Roy won four and Marty Brodeur has won three. I can't aesthetically enjoy basketball very much, because each individual scoring act is almost meaningless and they call fouls as though fragile little girls are playing, but I don't dismiss the whole sport because of it.
 
#499
#499
Houston lost because Guy Lewis is an idiot and made a tactical coaching mistake, period. They were the better team, but not leagues better.

I don't dislike goalie games and don't view great goalie play as luck. I don't like that goalie play can so dictate outcomes. I love live hockey. Love to watch on TV if I have a rooting interest. I love the strategy of the game. Don't like the flukey nature of the outcomes because dominance can mean 1-0 wins, which blind luck can reverse.

You're misunderstanding me. Dominance should be reflected in scoring. I don't think hockey and soccer allow for that. All sports have some element of luck. I just believe that hockey has a larger element. Just the idea that getting bulk shots on the net because eventually some get through is a crazy concept to me.
Posted via VolNation Mobile
 
#500
#500
Cheryl Bernard is kind of ok for an older chick. the one chick on the Swiss team seems like she might be a bit of a dirty girl.
 
New posts
You must log in or register to reply here.

VN Store



Back
Top