Justifiably unwilling to part with Canada-Russia tickets, and unable to sell USA-Switzerland and Sweden-Slovakia tickets, I saw all three games today. Miscellaneous thoughts:

USA vs Switzerland: closer than the shots would indicate, but not that close overall. The puck went in the net five times; the final score was 2-0. The Swiss seem to have no fear on offense at times - they'll pull toe-drag moves that you only see in pickup hockey, and they'll work. Jonas Hiller was, as usual, phenomenal, but the chances of the US not prevailing, even in front of a somewhat hostile crowd of Canadians chanting for Switzerland, were quite low.

Canada vs Russia: what can I say? This was literally the game of the century as far as everyone in Vancouver was concerned. Tickets were going for unfathomable amounts of money, and the atmosphere inside GM Place was nothing short of electric. When Canada scored - and it happened seven times - the arena went berserk. I honestly have never been to a game that was anything like this. The only downside, I suppose, was that there was no drama - Canada pulled so far ahead so quickly that the outcome was never really in doubt.

Sweden-Slovakia: after Canada-Russia, anything would have been a let-down. There were thousands of empty seats for the 9 pm game and both teams looked asleep for the first half of the game before putting together some nice shooting displays. The Slovak team was overjoyed to have pulled off a 4-3 upset, but by that point the crowd was looking forward to going home.

A few general things:

1. Except for the Canada-Russia game, there were tons of empty seats. Some sections were clearly comps to the various olympic committees, and they were often completely empty.

2. You get almost no replays on the scoreboard at the Olympics. Anything remotely controversial and lots of things that were not were excised after two seconds. It makes it a real pain to watch the game from the upper deck.

3. Someone decided that every announcement should be made in French, and if it was sufficiently important, in English too. I suppose it might make sense if they used Canadian expressions (particularly hockey expressions) in French, but everything sounded like it was written by an awkward and ultra-polite person in French. You don't need to dance around and call Canadians 'vous', and it sounds incredibly stupid to politely ask people to MAKE SOME NOISE!!!!!

4. Further to French: there is a ridiculous intermission interviewer who asks questions in English to people who speak French. They answer in English, and then he translates to French.

5. When was "Too Many Men on the Ice" replaced with "Too Many Players on the Ice"?

All in all, one hell of a day!

I'll have to admit that I have yet to figure out the finer points of twitter - our blogging software automatically posts links for us on it, but beyond that, I'd have to say that I'm a neophyte. I did just figure out this morning how to see things that other people have written directly to me. Like this one in reference to my post where I suggested that the US winning their game against Canada - where they were 1.5-to-1 underdogs - was not a miracle:

"ummm maybe you shud hav waited 2 03 3 days to stop being bitter b4 u wrote that know it all hockey column. real fans knew that...oh n 12 of 20 1980 USA team members played n the NHL n only 6 of those had long careers. Not exactly "NHL ready college kids""

That's actually two separate comments, btw. The 140-character limit makes it tough to fit your thoughts in.

Look, I've made my opinion abundantly clear: the best American hockey team ever assembled at the international level is the 1996 World Cup team. Seriously, look at that defense: Leetch, Housley, Kevin and Derian Hatcher, Chelios, Suter and Mathieu Schneider. (And Shawn Chambers, for what it's worth.) Richter in goal. At worst, four hall of famers at forward.

And we need to stop the myth-making around the 1980 US Olympic team. It was a good team - there were six players who jumped straight to real roles the NHL right after it was done. 17 players had been drafted either by the NHL or WHA or both. Eleven players had significant NHL careers. Four players - Harrington, Schneider, Eruzione and Suter - had already played professional hockey and had their eligibility re-instated; they were on the roster to provide veteran leadership and we wouldn't have expected them to continue on to NHL careers. These were not the typical US olympians of the era.

To put it another way: they were no Switzerland. Jonas Hiller and Mark Streit are more skilled than anyone on the American roster was at the time of the 1980 Olympics, but will any other Swiss player crack an NHL roster after the games are over? Severin Blindenbacher is one of their top defensemen, and he was a 9th round pick and minor-league journeyman. And yet, the Swiss still have a 17% chance to beat the US today.

Or to put it another way:

USA 1996 > USA 2010 >> USA 1980 > SUI 2010

I've lived in the US for a long time. I know some people still see the 1980 Olympics as payback for the Russians being first to put a dog in space. But there's nothing wrong with admitting that the US has a good hockey team as opposed to being lucky, is there? The Canadians, Russians, Czechs and Swedes would never pretend that they were underdogs at these Olympics (the Finns and the Slovaks are underdogs), so why should we pretend that an American team that's competitive with this group is an underdog?

Here's that 1980 roster just to jog your memory:

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Alan Robinson of the Associated Press writes of yesterday's game between Canada and the US:

"they pulled off the biggest Olympic hockey upset since the Miracle on Ice, stunning Canada 5-3 on Sunday..."

For real? What about:

Feb 11, 1984 - Norway 3, USA 3

Feb 16, 1988 - Switzerland 2, Finland 1

Feb 13, 1994 - France 4, USA 4

Feb 20, 2002 - Belarus 4, Sweden 3

Feb 16, 2006 - Switzerland 3, Czech Republic 2

Feb 18, 2006 - Switzerland 2, Canada 0

Now those are upsets! The really good US team beating a Canadian team that was a 60% favorite (66%, actually) to win the game? Not so much. Isn't it a bit of an insult to a team full of NHL stars to think that they're no more likely to beat Canada than a bunch of NHL-ready college kids were to beat the Soviets?

The irony of all this is that our flag-waving journalist who looks for every opportunity to dredge up 1980 nostalgia conveniently forgets about the 1996 World Cup of Hockey. Anybody remember that? The US absolutely dominated Canada, beating Canada three games out of four, and sending me and my housemates home to wallow in national self-pity and lash out at the rules that allowed players born in Canada to compete for the US. So if you were an American hockey fan, why would you want to whitewash over the year when you were demonstrably the best team in the World? If the Swedes win Olympic gold this year, do you think they'll call it their biggest victory since the 1994 Olympics?

We've now had five games between legitimate teams. As often happens, the losing teams have outshot the winners in the aggregate:

Indeed, the losing teams are doing a better job of getting the puck to the net - they just aren't scoring. And I think you know what I say when a team made up of NHL-caliber players shoots 4.8% on close-in shots (as the losing teams did): luck. If Russia played the Czechs 100 times, they'd probably win 55% of the time; if they played the Slovaks 100 times, they'd probably win 65%. But that doesn't mean they'll win 100% of the time if they play them each once.

Here's the overall ratio of close-in shots for and against for each team:

A lot of good it does Canada to be #1! But, as you can see yet again, there are seven teams that belong in a world hockey tournament...and that's it.

I heard this claim during the Sweden-Finland game just now. But this ignores the fact that there have been other international competitions - the Olympics, despite their modern importance, were not a serious tournament before 1998. So what has the American record been like in real top-level international competition?

So while the US had a rough stretch from 1976 to 1991, their record against Canada over the last 14 years is 4-4, and they've outscored Canada 27-25. That's a lot more honest than including past Olympic results where Canadian semi-pro teams played US semi-pro teams just five times in almost 40 years:

The US came into today's game as much as a 40/60 underdog and they won. That's like the New Orleans Saints beating the Minnesota Vikings to get to the Super Bowl. A great story, but nobody was offering 100-1 odds on the game.

Down the bulk of the game, Canada outshot and outchanced the US by a factor of 2. Bad bounces, bad penalties and Martin Brodeur's crazy baseball swing made a Canadian win that much less likely.

Here are the shot totals:

Again, "close" shots are from below the top of the face-off circles and between the face-off dots. Canada obviously owned the chances in the 1st and 3rd periods, but they were also playing from behind, so we would expect them to get more chances. The second period, which was mostly played tied, was much closer. The time spent tied and behind:

Both teams had trouble winning face-offs in their own end, likely when they were killing penalties:

Overall, Canada skaters played better than the US. But Ryan Miller had a great game, and Martin Brodeur...Well, I don't know what the hell he was doing back there. Did you ever have a coach who'd tell you to "go for a skate?" He wasn't talking to the goalie.

Some other random notes:

- Dustin Brown put a nice move on teammate Drew Doughty

- He wasn't the only one - Patrick Kane beat Doughty a couple of times, once cutting across from the right wing to go at Doughty on the left wing

- Joe Thornton looks invisible to me aside from winning a few pucks on the boards.

- I don't watch a lot of games in the Eastern time zone (they're over before I get home from work), so I don't get to see Sidney Crosby and Rick Nash very often. I have developed a new appreciation for their skills!

It should be clear that there are seven countries in the world that are competitive at the highest levels of international hockey tournaments: Canada, the US, Russia, the Czechs, Slovakia, Finland and Sweden. Each of these countries can field a team that is well above the NHL average, and most of them would likely be odds-on favorites to beat the Stanley Cup champion. Imagine if you took the Sharks and added a 1st line of Crosby, Nash and Iginla, plus gave them Niedermayer, Shea Weber and Duncan Keith on defense. That's still a substantially weaker team than the one Canada is fielding in the 2010 Olympics.

But after those seven countries, the drop-off in talent is massive. Germany can almost field a team where half the players have NHL experience, and they are 0-13 against the top seven teams since 2002. Switzerland has two good NHL players and has beaten several of the top seven teams, but almost lost to Italy in the 2006 Olympics. In fact, I was wondering if we could even make an 8th competitive team if we took the best players from every other country in the world. Here's a stab at the roster:

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One last thought on last night's game: Canada completely dominated Switzerland in the face-off circle. Not only did Canada win over 60% of offensive and defensive zone faceoffs, but almost 60% of these faceoffs were in Switzerland's end:

Normally, that's a very bad sign for your opponent. If there's a minor negative, it's that Canada won only 50% of defensive zone draws. Of course, over just 18 face-offs, this is well within the range of random variation.

The net result of both having a lot of offensive zone faceoffs and winning a lot of them was total dominance on the shot board:

Canada both had double the total shots that Switzerland did and also twice as many opportunities close to the net.

Switzerland clearly has a great goaltender, and they gave up on offensive opportunities in the 3rd period to prevent Canada from having any itself. We should keep in mind that this is not normal behavior in a tied 3rd period - consider Washington's shot totals in tied third periods this season:

Washington is a prolific shooting team, and they played four tied third periods this season against teams that are nowhere near as good as they are. And yet their opponents played them to a draw, both in goals and shots. It is simply out of the realm of NHL strategy to play a system that gets you outshot 23-6 in the third period in hopes of hanging on for a tie. As Tyler noted in the comments in my previous post, perhaps this team could use some practice beating the trap - but not scoring a goal against the Swiss in the 3rd period yesterday was mostly bad luck.