Olympic ice hockey thread

Without looking it up, Chara, Gaborik and in goal. Peter Budaj. Hmmm..I'll take Norway or Austria

 

I think Hossa's a Slovak. I know Halak is.

 

Agreed, though I thought they'd take Neal just to streamline a Pittsburgh forward set.

EDIT: "possibly" take Neal ...

 

Well, for starters, Zdeno Chara, Marian Hossa, Jaroslav Halak, Peter Budaj, Lubomir Visnovsky, Marian Gaborik, Tomas Kopecky (?), Tomas Tatar (Red Wings). People forget Slovakia played Canada a very close game in the 2010 semifinals and should have won the bronze medal (lost to Finland). They are a dark horse, but a very respectable one.

As said earlier, I could make a case for any of six teams to win it, much less medal.

Feel free to post your predictions BEFORE the tournament starts.

 

Gaborik won't play due to an injury, same with Henrik Sedin for Sweden.

 

Everything else being equal, I'm picking the Russians on home ice.

 

What's Vegas got the odds at? Rask has been unbelievable for the Bruins lately. If Finland is like 10 or 15 to one, it's worth a little flutter on the hot goalie theory.

 

Finland is always a dangerous darkhorse. Never won gold in my lifetime (ever?), but medaled several times, including silver in 2006 and bronze in 2010.

 

Interesting that no one has repeated in more than 20 years and the defending gold medalists (Sweden in 1998, Czechs in 2002, Canada in 2006, Sweden in 2010) haven't made the podium the next time around.

 

I see you can use google. You might have wanted to use google when you predicted that Sweden's Alex Steen would make team Canada.

As for predictions, who knows in a single game elimination tournament. I think there are 4 teams with a legitimate shot at gold. Russia, Canada, Sweeden and the US. Finland being a real longshot but if Raask plays out of his mind I guess you never know.

 

I voted in our poll today and went with Team Russia.

SI had a good story on how the coach has got several players to buy into a more disciplined system. Still, as the story pointed out, there's the possibility someone, read Ovechkin, will try to improvise too much.

Russia's also got better goaltending than in the past. With "Varley" and "Bobby" in the net, the home team is solid. I also think home ice means a lot in this tournament.

I'm not even going to take a shot at trying to spell the name of Russia's coach because it's a mile long. However, the name did ring a bell. I think he was a defenseman at Lake Placid. I might have missed it but I don't think SI's story mentioned it.

 

Finland and the US have a shot if their goalie plays lights out and they win some 2-1 games.