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Well the IOC is worried that women’s hockey isn't competitive enough and hasn't really developed outside of Canada and the US so I think it would be a wise move by Canada and the US to relax on racking up the score if they still want to see women’s hockey in future Olympics.
I remember last Olympics they embarrassed the host country 16 - 0
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Originally posted by E N D L E S S these cars are like high maintenance girlfriends, and everytime they whine or something isn't right....your bank account crys
There's the "agony of defeat." And then there's this women's ice hockey score from the European Olympic pre-qualifying tournament: Slovakia 82, Bulgaria 0.
That's correct: 82 goals for Slovakia, none for Bulgaria.
The International Ice Hockey Federation said the result, from a game played Saturday at the tournament in Liepaja, Latvia, set a record score for a women's IIHF-sanctioned event. It was not the all-time record for futility, however; that is still held by Thailand, which lost 92-0 to South Korea in the 1998 Asia-Oceania U18 Championship.
Slovakia, which won all four of its games at the tournament, outshot Bulgaria 139-0, scoring on 58.9 percent of its shots on goal. Slovakia averaged one goal every 44 seconds.
"We took it as training," Slovakia coach Miroslav Karafiat said after Saturday's game.
Bulgaria trailed 7-0 after 5 minutes, 19-0 after 10 and 31-0 at the end of the first period.
The drubbing capped a woeful showing for the Bulgarian women, who also lost 30-1 to Croatia and 41-0 to Italy in earlier games.
Janka Culikova led Slovakia with 10 goals, while Martina Velickova scored nine. Fourteen different players scored at least one goal.
Slovakia, which also beat Croatia, Latvia and Italy, advanced to another qualifying group with Germany, Kazakhstan and France. The winner will secure a spot at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics.
Bulgaria was eliminated after scoring one goal and giving up conceding 192 in the tournament.
The Slovakian men's team clinched its biggest ever victory against the Bulgarians 14 years ago when they won 20-0.
Originally posted by E N D L E S S these cars are like high maintenance girlfriends, and everytime they whine or something isn't right....your bank account crys
regardless of how lopsided or anything is
unless the rules are changed and tiebreakers are not set by goals(which will NEVER happen) then we will continue to see the powerhouses RACK up goals as much as they can in the round robin.
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China playing US right now. It's good to see teams from all over playing at the games. Doesn't matter if they get killed on the ice. So many people have this win at all costs, don't bother showing up if you can't compete, attitude.
I watched a few minutes of the game. People were cheering the Chinese goalie when she made a good save.
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Of couse, US beat China - but China scored 1 goal!
__________________ Do Not Put Aftershave on Your Balls. -604CEFIRO Looks like I'm gonna have some hot sex again tonight...OOPS i got the 6 pack. that wont last me the night, I better go back and get the 24 pack! -Turbo E kinda off topic but obama is a dilf - miss_crayon Honest to fucking Christ the easiest way to get a married woman in the mood is clean the house and do the laundry.....I've been with the same girl almost 17 years, ask me how I know. - quasi
CRANBROOK, British Columbia – Len Bosquet steered his red pick up truck through Scott Niedermayer's childhood, a tour of memories frozen just beneath the surface of the frosty checkerboard of backyard rinks, and iced over parks, tennis courts and streets that covers this railroad and lumber town that sits center ice between the Purcell and Rocky mountains.
"A lot of times they'd play here after school," said Bosquet, who coached Niedermayer and his younger brother Rob as boys. He was pointing to the outdoor rink built by firefighters from the fire station next door, an early stop on a path that has carried Scott Niedermayer to Stanley Cup victories in New Jersey and Anaheim. This month the path continues with the captaincy of the Team Canada and the spotlight of the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver and arguably the most anticipated international hockey tournament in history.
Bosquet continued down Second Street for a few blocks before turning right onto 14th Avenue, parking next to the outdoor rink at Baker Park, another old Niedermayer haunt. A father was playing hockey with his pre-school aged son.
"You can almost always find someone playing hockey in Cranbrook, doesn't matter day or night," Bosquet said watching the pair. "That's what kids do in Cranbrook, they grow up playing hockey. Cranbrook is just a hockey town, eh."
Canada is defined by its relentless winter. A nation long hardened by the cold, it embraces its frozen destiny, turning it into an icy canvas that, in turn, reflects the genius and flaws of the country it covers.
"I would sometimes imagine one great outdoor hockey game, stretching from just inside the Rockies to the shores of the Atlantic, detouring only around the too temperate climate of a few of the bigger cities," Peter Gzowski wrote of his own childhood in The Game Of Our Lives, his seminal account of a season spent with Wayne Gretzky's Edmonton Oilers.
A few minutes before 9 p.m. on Feb. 15, Gzowski's sheet of ice will have stretched to the western edge of the continent. Scott Niedermayer, maple leaf over his heart, "C" on his left shoulder, will step onto the rink at Vancouver's Canada Hockey Place, leading Team Canada, quite possibly the greatest hockey team ever assembled, into what U.S. coach Ron Wilson calls "the best Olympic tournament you'll ever see."
Thirteen days later 33 million Canadians expect to see Niedermayer, the 36-year-old Ducks defenseman, lead Team Canada up to the top step of the medal podium at the end of the tournament.
“The Olympic Games, in Canada, is at its cold winter heart about winning gold in men’s hockey,” said Michael McKinley, author of Hockey: A People’s History, the definitive chronicle of Canada’s national sport. “Canada could ‘win the podium’ (medal count) as the Canadian Olympic (Committee’s) slogan of its stated goal goes, but if we don’t win gold (in hockey), there will be weeping and gnashing and calls for Wayne Gretzky to come back, etc.”
Perhaps no other national team in any sport hosting a major international event, not even in soccer’s World Cup, has ever been under as much pressure to win as Team Canada will be this month.
“It’s going to be glacial, constant, unrelenting, unremitting pressure on Team Canada,” former Ducks general manager Brian Burke, now the GM for Team USA and the Toronto Maple Leafs. “There is no analog for it in the U.S. It’s not a sport in Canada, it’s a religion.”
Which is why some in Canada suggest, only somewhat in jest, that Prime Minister Stephen Harper, for at least the next month, has the nation’s second toughest job, the country’s real heavy lifting being left up to Niedermayer. Those making the suggestion, are also quick to add that they are more confident in Niedermayer’s ability to deliver than they are Harper’s.
Or Sidney Crosby’s, the Pittsburgh Penguin’s young superstar.
There had been speculation in the Canadian media in recent months that Team Canada’s captaincy would go to Crosby, the National Hockey League’s most transcendent personality. In the end, however, the selection of Niedermayer was a no brainer.
“In hockey circles, Niedermayer’s credibility is much higher than Crosby’s in the vast scheme of things,” McKinley said.
MacLeans, Canada's largest weekly news magazine, recently called Niedermayer "the greatest puck-moving blueliner since Bobby Orr, and a player whom victory has followed from city to city, tournament to tournament, from the time he picked up a stick."
Niedermayer has won four Stanley Cups and is the only player to have won the Stanley Cup, the Memorial Cup (minor league hockey's top prize), the World championships, World Cup, World Junior Championships and Olympics.
As much as his resume, however, Niedermayer was named Captain Canada because of his presence on the ice, especially in glare of the spotlight, his uncommon ability to both settle and inspire a team when the stakes are highest.
"He's won everything," Team Canada coach Mike Babcock said. "He's not a big talker just a model on the ice that brings the kind of leadership we need to get us over the top.
"Niedermayer in my opinion is a guy who lifts his game when the game's on the line, finds ways to make big plays, I just think he's the perfect guy."
Canada sorely missed Niedermayer's influence at the 2006 Olympic Games. Arthroscopic knee surgery kept him out of the Games, and, according to Niedermayer's Anaheim teammate Teemu Selanne, was a major factor in Team Canada's failure to defend the gold medal.
"That was huge. The other teams were lucky," said Selanne, who won a silver medal with Finland in 2006.
Niedermayer is a man of quiet resolve, and if you listen closely you can hear a pride and confidence in Niedermayer's voice when he talks about his Olympic captaincy. He acknowledges the pressure but only briefly and with a shrug. Mainly he heads into the Olympics with a sense of responsibility.
"Maybe it's just my overall personality but I'm not going to get too caught up in that," Niedermayer, a standout on Canada's 2002 gold medal squad, said referring to the Olympic hype. "There's a responsibility and a job to do with it that I'll do my best with. But I'm not going to get proud of it, too excited about it but at the same time I'm not going to put too much extra attention on it. I don't think I have to do anything different than I would do otherwise.
"I'm sure it's going to be different when you get the jersey thrown on and you head out onto the ice. I think it will be a new experience for me for sure. But I'm going to try and not get too crazy about it. I understand what has to be done."
He is in many ways a throwback to an era that exists only in news reels and the collective Canadian imagination.
"He's a classic example, the poster boy of what a hockey player should be," McKinley said. "He comes from this small Canadian mountain railroad town...and he's won everything but is the model of humility. Niedermayer harkens back to players Canadians like to think existed in the past."
A time when Canada's hockey heroes seemed to come straight off a pond in places like Parry Sound, Ontario, and Trois-Rivieres, Quebec.
And Cranbrook, British Columbia.
“The thing about hockey in Canada as opposed to hockey in other countries is that the sport percolates far deeper into our national soil and thus effects everything we grow in it,” Douglas Coupland wrote in Souvenir of Canada.
Even in Canada there are few places where hockey's roots run as deep as they do in Cranbrook.
Hockey isn't played so much in Cranbrook as it is celebrated. City Hall has Jersey Day, where city employees show up for work wearing the sweater of their favorite NHL team. Out on Highway 95, the town's main drag, the marquee at McDonald's reads "Cranbrook Is Hockeyville!" The statement is both the town's unofficial motto \and a reference to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's annual nationwide "Hockeyville," contest to determine the community most committed to the game. Cranbrook is a 2010 finalist.
"We are Hockeyville," insisted Cranbrook city council member Liz Schatschneider. "We have Captain Canada. What more do you need?"
Niedermayer, however, is just one of a number of future NHL players produced by the town. Detroit Red Wings Hall of Famer Steve Yzerman was born in Cranbrook.
"So he was sort of the local legend," Niedermayer said. "I remember as a kid you'd get your hockey card and look on the back and for birthplace it says Cranbrook, B.C. We all thought that was pretty cool."
Cranbrook natives played on the Stanley Cup winning teams in 11 of the 12 non-lock-out NHL seasons between 1994-95 and 2006-7.
"Because I'm on the city council, I'd like to think it's something in the water," Schatschneider said laughing.
Or on top of it.
This heavily forested region known as the Kootenays, is surrounded by lakes. When Niedermayer was growing up, Bousquet in late autumn would point his truck north on Highway 95 and start scouting local lakes to see which one had the best ice.
"If it was cold in November, you might get some then. It depended sometimes if you had rain and snow. That could really affect it," Niedermayer said. "Other times it just gets cold and ever piece of water is perfect ice, just glassy."
On the weekend, the Niedermayers and other families loaded up the family and the barbeque and followed Bousquet to Jim Smith Lake or Norbury or Peckhams lakes for a day of pond hockey.
"Somebody would have a fire, you'd have your hot chocolate, and you get out there and the mums are playing, the little kids, the little brothers, the little sisters," Niedermayer said. "Just out in the middle of nothing, nowhere, trees, wilderness, forest, mountains are all right there.
"The general memory for me would be of getting on the ponds outside, blue sky, pretty cold still, but the mountains there all covered with snow with your family and friends and just having fun, putting a boot out, usually not even a net, someone's boot and you had to hit the boot with the puck, that was one goal."
It was on those lakes and outdoor rinks that Niedermayer was taught and embraced a work ethic and sense of duty and community.
"When other kids were out chasing girls, he was chasing pucks," Bousquet said. "No one worked harder than Scott."
Niedermayer was recently asked if it was a cliché to describe Cranbrook as a town that rolls up its sleeves. He smiled and shook his head no.
"Clichés are there for a reason and a lot of times they're right," he said. "It is a close community in a lot of ways just because of its size and because of your familiarity with a lot of people. It's a Canadian community that has to deal with winter, so hockey and winter sports are popular. There's a lot of ex-old hockey players that go. A pretty big culture in that sense. A lot of hard working people."
A lot those people have left their finger prints on the Stanley Cup during the four times Niedermayer has brought it home to share with Cranbrook. He left home while still in high school to play junior hockey, starting a journey that would take him to tony New Jersey suburbs and the beaches of Orange County. And yet he never really left Cranbrook.
"Hopefully in a lot of ways I haven't changed too much," Niedermayer said. "I think I was fortunate growing up between my parents trying to instill their values and the coaches that I had surrounded in hockey, sportsmanship, go out and work hard, compete hard, play for your teammates, all those lessons, I was taught those early on and tried to understand them. I was fortunate it was an environment I was brought up in."
During the 2004-05 lockout, Niedermayer played for a local adult team. He still champions local environmental causes and charities.
“He never misses a fundraiser in this town,” Bousquet said.
In 2003 a pair of forest fires threatened Cranbrook. Fighting the fires and strong winds for what B.C. incident commander Bob Pfannenschmidt called “seven days of hell” had left fire crews physically and emotionally wasted. Then Niedermayer showed up unexpectedly with the Stanley Cup at the fire base camp near one of the lakes he grew up playing on. He spent the next three hours passing the cup around, talking with the firefighters and thanking them for their service.
“Scott just lifted everybody’s spirit,” Pfannenschmidt said. “You couldn’t give (the firefighters) two weeks off and get that much replenishment.”
And now the man who has made a career of lifting cups by lifting teams will try and lift a nation of 33-million sitting on the edges of their seats. Some of the folks in Cranbrook will make the drive over the mountains to Vancouver, most will stay home, watching the Olympics on TV, all of them convinced that the small town boy from Hockeyville will deliver once again in Canada’s golden moment. He always has.
Bud Caldwell survived three years as a paratrooper in World War II. Back in Canada he had been left for dead at the bottom of a hard rock mine shaft. He had even beaten cancer.
But in the summer of 2000, the doctors sent Caldwell home to die. If a second bout with cancer didn’t kill him in a few days or weeks, the doctors said, the congestive heart failure caused by the chemotherapy would.
Caldwell was at home in bed the afternoon Niedermayer walked in unannounced carrying the Stanley Cup. Caldwell’s granddaughter Mary would late say the visit produced a kind of magic. Bud Caldwell lived another eight year.
Scotty, beam us up!!
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[23-07, 02:03] shawn79 i find that at vietnamese place they cut ur hair like they cut grass
[23-07, 02:03] shawn79 do u go to vietnamese places for haircuts
Originally posted by Girl ^ Yes it's sad when you stare at the shape of my penis through my overly skin tight jeans and not help but feel like a shameful little boy compared to me.
Iginla on the 4th line? i hate the flames so much but this is team Canada and Iginla is our horse, he along with Crosby and Broduer or Lu will determine the success in this tournament. I refuse to believe he can't build chemistry with Crosby and Nash
Iginla on the 4th line? i hate the flames so much but this is team Canada and Iginla is our horse, he along with Crosby and Broduer or Lu will determine the success in this tournament. I refuse to believe he can't build chemistry with Crosby and Nash
but reality is that he couldnt
those few days were just so bad for him on that top line with Crosby and Nash that he got bumped down for Staal
but now that Crosby has a familiar face to play with, its perfect
but realistically looking, Iginla's the odd man out here
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