World champtionships 2010

A bit late for a recap, but let's stroll down the memory lane a bit. 2010 was the year of THE Olympic hockey tournament. Held in Canada, birthplace of hockey. Thus, the following world championships were doomed beforehand by most of the media analysts and sports experts.

The games were pretty much set up for Russia's third straight gold medal. They had the dream team they wanted and other countries had to scrape the teams out of secondary players due to lots of rejections by superstars.

As a Finn, I even had some hopes up for the second gold medal. With solid team play and some timely goals, Finland could have had a good chance this year. Well, those dreams came crashing down early in the tournament. Losing to Denmark and struggling with Germany moved the medal games' interest towards other teams.

Canada and USA were seriously sloppy on their run, USA even taking a shot of falling down to B level. European big countries, Czech, Russia and Sweden played mediocre hockey with occasional flashes of enthusiasm.

Eventually the final was set up with Russia and Czech republic. Counting the millions in salary, Russians were up by a decade. In the end Czech took the gold after very solid defensive game and enough individual skill to finish the counter attack scoring chances. Russia fell apart with uncontrolled superstars. The coaching of that team seemed to be nonexistent.

A shame indeed. If one looks at Russian players individually, they are about as good as they come. There's speed, amazing skill and now even toughness. Goaltending was outstanding throughout the tournament too. So what went wrong? Why didn't they wipe Czech out with 10-1 or something in the final?

Well, take a look at one of the flashiest players ever, Alexander Ovechkin. He had five goals or something, which was decent production. However, if you take a look at the shots on goal, five isn't that much. If anyone would have counted the number of shots taken to defenders' shin pads, five would have been ridiculously low count for the amount of attempts. In Washington, AO would find himself in the bench after shooting 10 times in the first defender and causing a counter attack every time. And he doesn't do that there. Same goes with the super talented guys trying to dribble the puck all the way through five defending players and a goalie. Not passing, not shooting. Just losing the puck 99% of the time. Wake up, coach?

Return to the very basics of team sports and hockey, Russia would have easily dominated in Germany. I wonder would their hockey organization ever be willing to take a North-American coach? My guess, not, but that might prove some magic on ice. Just imagine having some speedy Russians for a checking line? Some being told to shoot more, some to aim the shots?

Well, anyway, I'm a fan of entertaining hockey and for that purpose I sure hope that Russia and other teams pick up their planning boards and get prepared for the next international tournament.

Best moments in the tournament, in random order: Jaromir Jagr, the old horse still can keep two defenders off the puck and shoot or pass, just plain magical. Young Swedes, Pääjärvi and Omark will rock the NHL in a couple of years. Just let the guys play. Petteri Nummelin, the heart and soul of Finnish national team, year after year.

The rock bottom: Semin tipping Ovechkin headfirst into Fedorov on the attacking zone, leading to Czech's gold medal winning goal by Rolinek. Epic fail - about 1:45 onwards.