2014 Olympics Thread: Fingers Crossed, Sochi

I love when the announcer says things like, "she really wants it, you can see the fire in her eyes." Uh, no you can't. She's wearing a helmet and going 70 MPH. I guess they have to say something.

 

Truthfully it looks like a hell of a lot of fun. But then again I love speed. Which is why I own a crotch rocket.

 

I ride too, and going head first down a a glorified ice hill sounds terrifying. When I ride, I get to measure the risk, I decide how fast I enter a corner, how fast I exit. When you are on a bobsled run, its more like a roller coaster, once it starts you are in for a ride whether you like it or not.

 

Boy, that favoured Nowegian CC skier's mother is the biggest cunt on earth, huh? "You're the worst Norwegian. You should go home." You're son is in the Olympics, lady. That's good enough. Set yourself on fire.

 

TJ OSHIE!!!! Holy hell that was a game. I still can't figure out why NBC doesn't show these games live on the regular channel for everyone that doesn't have NBCSports.

 

Eight rounds, goddamn that was close. Slovakia should have been the harder team for you guys.

Still, shootouts are stupid, ruin the game, and I'll never accept them as a part of the sport. I don't care if its an exhibition game and its 100 minutes of overtime, that's how it should be played. The team should win, and it's unfair weight for the goaltenders.

 

Spoken like a Canadian who is insecure about his goaltending. In the Olympics, with so many games, you just can't have 120mins of overtime.

Oshie's GWG was a good one. Simple, hard shot five hole, Bob just couldn't get down fast enough.

 

I didn't mention the goaltending, in fact I'm not worried about anything whatsoever. You seem to forget what country I'm from. Shootouts suck, the end. They taint the sport and were ushered in by businessmen who never gave a shit (and still don't) about hockey in the first place. You'll find more fans of Hitler up here than you will fans of shoot-outs.

You play until you score. They don't settle baseball games with makeshift homerun derbies.

 

I agree the SO or the skills contest as Mike Babcock refers to it, is stupid, its not hockey and it doesn't reward teams for playing well.

However, in a format like the Olympics when you simply can't have a 4 OT game. It doesn't make sense.

 

I say do what we do in some of the local tournaments up here: it's sudden death, and there is a buzzer ever two minutes. At the buzzer if nobody scores, each team loses a member until its two-on-two. It's a weird idea, but it finishes games quick because its all fast breaks. Exciting, too.

Kubla: shootout puts the game on just the goalie.

 

Anyone else remember the sexual tension between those two? My God, after she made that save there was some electricity between them.

 

It puts the game on the shooter also. This isn't soccer where the shootout is the only scorable part of the game.

 

You are right, I just think it turns the game into a 50/50 chance contest. I prefer the full action. Everyone has their own sound points about it, all I can do is hope it goes away eventually.

 

How about a brave heart style battle with the hockey sticks instead of a shootout?

That would be more entertaining for me.

 

Make the sticks double-ended so they are better weapons, and add blades to the skates. Yeah. Now we're talkin'.

I'm mainly an outsider to hockey, I mean growing up and living in Minnesota I see and hear about it often and enjoy it but don't actively follow it. A tied score in any sport sucks and shootouts are awesome, that's what I say.

 

So the cure to the shootout is to make it a 2v2 competition that will in turn decide the game by most likely a fast break shooter vs goalie situation? Kind of like a shootout?

I like overtime playoff hockey, but in a round robin tourney, I'm more than happy to see a shootout end a game.

 

Like a shootout. Except being against opposing players, passing, face-offs, body contact, line changes on the fly and team strategy. But believe me: player eliminator IS exciting, but guys get tired quickly trying to cover that huge area. It's a strange experiment, I can't speak on how it work when you're using top shelf players. I don't disagree that round robin games should be decided that way on the basis that it hurries the game up and who the fuck likes ties? At least in the NHL you get a point if you even lose the shootout. But some tournaments decide championship games that way, The World Cup of soccer has been decided at least twice in a shootout since 1994, I think it cheapens a victory. Like when your opponent scratches on the eightball or the opposing players are murdered by Dodgers fans and forced to forfeit.

 

Honestly, I think a stupider rule than the shootout in general is the fact that you can recycle players as many times as you like after the first 3, in Olympic play. It was great that Oshie was so clutch, but seeing Oshie vs Kovalchuk/Datsyuk round after round is just stupid. Maybe after the first 3, each can go again, that's fine, otherwise, its a mockery. Part of the interesting part of a multi-round shootout is seeing D-men or lower line forwards take their shot as opposed to stud forward vs stud goalie again and again.

 

What if you kept the shootout except for a tournament final (in both hockey and soccer)? The main reason it's used is to end a game without wearing out the winning team too much for its next game, but in a final that's not a consideration.