My thoughts exactly, Weedy. Ruggiero is just preparing that last game. Now, the Italian men are a lot better than I would have thought.
"I think womens hockey deserves a spot in the olympics. It would be one thing if only a few teams were showing up, but there are enough teams to keep it around. The competition will eventually get better." Not good enough. The Olympics should celebrate sports that already have competitive international athletes/teams, not be used as decade-long experiments. This isn't an exhibition sport any more, it has full medal accreditation. Maybe it should be an exhibition sport until the magical fairy-tale of the competition "eventually" getting better actually materializes. Getting rid of softball from the Summer Olympics was the right thing to do, since they only had four competitive teams (twice the number of womens hockey). Team sports need special considerations. In individual sports, you can get elite athletes from smaller nations -- like skiers from Croatia and Lichtenstein -- who can foot it with the world's best and claim gold. Even Canada had a gold-medal winner at biathlon, a sport that doesn't register on the radar in Canada, but all it takes is an especially gifted and motivated freak athlete. Whereas with team sports, you don't need just one or two elite athletes, you need a whole stable of them. You require depth. And when you see statistics that show Canada has 60,000 registered female hockey players and nations like Italy and Russia have 250 and 400 registered female players respectively, then the competition is a joke. (I am presuming those census numbers are for all women, not just senior grade level, so it makes me wonder if Italy even had enough bodies to fill two senior teams.) Even ringette and broomball are more competitive that this!!
I don't have much of a problem with the scoring, as it factors into the gold-medal game and it's tough NOT to score in hockey when you're standing in front of the net with the puck. I thought there was a little bit of individul chippiness from Canada the other day against Sweden, though. In particular, with the Canadians up 8-1 in the second period, a Swede defenseman made a nice poke check near the net ... and then the Canadian forward just ran her over with a nice shoulder to the gut. That was completely unnecessary.
The Olympics should celebrate sports that already have competitive international athletes/teams The Olympics are about putting our political bs aside and competing against each other for the simple sport of it. It doesn't matter how equal the competition is. As long as there are enough teams for a tournament I think it should stay. So what if there are 2 elite teams. There are still 6 other teams that want to play. We should celebrate the fact that women want to play one of the toughest team sports there is.
njsk8r20> This has got nothing to do with political bs. None, nada, zilch. And it's got nothing to do with being "equal," it's about being competitive. That is a HUGE difference, and right now womens hockey is not competitive. As far as there being enough teams, that's not an adequate requirement. Look at how many people do silly thing to make the Guiness Book of World Records, and put an Olympic Gold Medal on the line you could get teams to do anything, from break-dancing to washing cars to stamp collecting. There are far more sports in this world than there are Olympic medals, and many of those sports have far higher international participation rates than do womens hockey. Until federations can grow their sport and get participants that can provide a competive tournament, then it should just be a demonstration sport. Right now, it's a farce.
AND... As bad as these Euro womens hockey teams are, and as bad as their recruitment to get women to participate in the game, the Euro officials are even worse. All Olympic games have to be officiated by neutral referees, and those European referees are KERR-RAP. When Canada takes on the USA in the Gold medal final, there will be neutral refs, and take it from the Canadian girls -- their biggest worry won't be the American sharpshooters -- it'll be fear of the near-total incompetence of the neutral refs. Sadly, until the game does grow globally, the standard of the neutral refs for championship games will be equally farcical.
Good point, TRT, but even horribly incompetent refs would be better than that American ref from the gold medal final in 2002.
On CBC last night Geraldine Heaney (once a player, now a coach in Canada) stated flatly that she would rather have an American referee for the final than a European referee. As long as it wasn't the one from 2002.
Also, she led Brian Williams through three examples of the shittiness of the refs to date.
OH NO! Not the ref thing again. I thought that was just for the NFL fans (just kidding, put down the torches and pitchforks). I have a hard time criticizing refs after being one. I am not saying you shouldn't, just that I don't like to. How come the olympics are using only one ref? I would think the larger playing area would make it more necessary to have two.
I would think the larger playing area would make it more necessary to have two. Larger playing area = players more spread out = better visibility for referee? Just a guess.
"Geraldine Heaney (once a player, now a coach in Canada)..." Brian Williams said she was "coach of the University of Waterloo Warriors." She is coach of the womens program at UW, but wouldn't that then make her coach of the Athenas? (I'm pretty sure that's what we call the ladies here.) GO WARRIORS!!
to change direction on this one just a bit ... what kind of a psychological twist would it put on the American team if, as urged by Ruggiero, Canada "toned it down" and actually threw a game, thus potentially pitting them against the US in a semi rather than the predicted Gold Medal match!?!?!? (i gotta give credit to "the Duke" for this idea)
On CBC last night Geraldine Heaney (once a player, now a coach in Canada) stated flatly that she would rather have an American referee for the final than a European referee. As long as it wasn't the one from 2002. Seriously. That was the worst referee job of any game of any sport I have ever seen.
Did anybody see Don Cherry's comments Wednesday night on CBC...? Grapes said at least three times that running up scores "is not the Canadian way." He mentioned something about "The Hockey Gods" -- I think what he meant was karma -- saying these things come back to bite you in the ass. (The triumphant often have short memories; the humiliated have very long ones.) He also said that the women are in danger of "committing suicide." He said the IOC is dominated by European nations and votes. He said the overwhelming dominance of womens hockey is in North America. He said that baseball is played in many more countries and is a major sport in the Americas and Japan, and the IOC felt no sympathy when they axed that sport from the Games. He said he predicts womens hockey will stick around for the Vancouver 2010 Games, but that he had big worries that it wouldn't be around after that. For a while there, I began to think Don was reading my mind. (Like Farber, I actually believe the paucity of real sports at the Winter Games means womens hockey will survive as a medal sport because unlike the Summer Games they are desperate for content, but the fact that it's even being discussed is not good for the game. And that's what I think Don was on about, asking, what is good for the game? Don doesn't believe running up scores is ever good for the game.)
The theme that strikes me most running thru this topic is that of the way this is made to be about nationalism. From the CBC's initial response article to the Ruggiero comments right through their greatest spokesperson, "The Don" ... this is less about sportsmanship than it is about national pride/identity.
Don also gave his bona fides, saying he's been a big supporter of the womens program since the inception, saying people used to laugh at him, and that he has been proved right, and that he cares as passionately about the survival of the womens game as anybody. (And I know he's not making that up, because I remember well in the early 1980s he was right in the middle of it.) Whatever else people think of Don, his support and history with grassroots hockey is irrefutable. Lots and lots of hockey fans up here pay close attention to what he says.
Link to Cherry's comments here.
I saw Cherry and he actually made a pretty reasoned argument. No bulging veins.
