Despite holding the rights, YLE have decided not to show the UEFA Cup final tomorrow, instead opting for a 5 hour marathon of crap live from Halifax. This fucking country.

Due to a sequence of unlikely results in other games, Norway have qualified for the quarter final despite only getting 3 points from six games. We are playing Canada tonight. This must be the most unevenly matched quarter final game in the history of the World Cup and I fully expect us to lose by at least ten goals.

We've already played Canada once and lost only by one goal then but there is no way Canada will make the same mistake and underestimate us this time around.

Serious blow-outs are quite rare at this stage, even when a dark horse makes it into the last eight (and one always does, as there are 6 recognised "big" hockey nations (7 if you include Slovakia, who didn't make it to the quarters this time)).

The Canadians are very likely to take their foot off the gas once they get three goals up; I wouldn't expect the margin to be more than five.

I see that one of the games that BaN is bitching about is Sweden-Czech Republic. If that proves to be a snoozer, there isn't much hope for international hockey.

QUOTE:
And in Canada, the Memorial Cup is still going on, I believe, and a lot of people up there care more about that.

Nah. Worlds are front-page. Memorial cup is not.

I haven't paid much attention to the worlds in years - have they started this late for some years now or is this the latest start ever? Delaying it until after the end of the first round of the NHL playoffs makes a huge difference for Canada as it allows us to pick from 22 NHL rosters instead of just 14.

They've been sliding later for a couple of years now.

They used to start in mid-April, but made it to the last week of April last year, and I think that the fact that Canada is hosting helped convince them to start even a bit later than that this year.

Some of the Euro club seasons are getting longer, too, which helps bring additional pressure towards the same end.

I will be watching the 5 hour marathon, so i hope you're right ursus.

YLE don't have the rights to the UEFA Cup final, so I'll let them off, but it's shocking that no-one thought to offer viasat something for some kind of live transmission. There are 50,000 Russians in Finland, and all the ones I know support Zenit, surely it could be streamed for them?

Nah. Worlds are front-page. Memorial cup is not.

Well, the Worlds are in Canada this year, no Canadian teams are left in the Stanley Cup playoffs (unless you count Detroit) and the Memorial Cup proper doesn't start until Friday. All of that helps coverage of the WC, I suspect.

The thing I don't understand about the Memorial Cup is that in addition to the three league champions, they give a place to the hosts. This year, the hosts (Kitchener) won the OHL, so they gave the other slot to the OHL runner-up. How is that fair? Why not the WHL runner-up or the QMJHL runner-up? And what happens if the event is awarded to a host city whose team sucks. They could, conceivably go on a tear and win the Memorial Cup without having deserved to be there at all. Whose idea was that?

I presume it was the idea of the clubs that wanted to host, and didn't want to risk not getting people into the rink.

So, BaN got overtime, a penalty shot and a generally tense match. I wonder if he found it boring.

The worlds being here is a big factor, Reed, but even in a normal year, the Memorial Cup isn't a major event outside the cities that have teams playing in it. And none of these are in cities that are major media markets in their own right.

And as for your question about whether or not the hosts suck, as in the WC, the quality of the host team's squad is not *entirely* ignored when awarding a site. S. Africa is lucky its squad had a good run in the late 90s. If its team had sucked in 2001-2 the way it currently sucks, I'm not so sure itwould be hosting in 2010. Similarly, truly crap hosts of the Mem Cup are rare, I think.

I was under the impression that it was a bigger deal than that, akin to the college basketball final four (except done with the taste and understated class that the NPS is known for).

I guess they don't award the host city until the season has started, so maybe they look at the team's form.

I've got two deadlines tomorrow, ursus, and my attempt to command the television while typing at the dinner table was (rightly) given short shrift. I'll wait for your boys against Leijonat in the middle of the night, which is probably for the best as I really am not enough of a hockey fan to watch four games in quick succession.

Canada seem to be cruising home against Norway. Has the draw for the semis already been made?

2-0 to Finland so far. Will people have to start being nice to Doug Shedden?

And its Finland-Russia and Canada-Sweden in the semis. Ihanaa Leijonat ihanaa indeed.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1Bhk7ZtGZ3M

Four best teams in the semis, which is how it should be. Gritty performance by a US team that is far from the best possible squad (though to be fair, that is also true to some extent for each of the four semi-finalists).

1890, what happened to your boys against the Russians?

Well thay had this spectacular goal scored against them.

USA hockey has made some good strides in recent years. They've won junior and under 18 titles and can be routinely counted on not to completely embarass themselves in any of these senior events. That's a big improvement over where things were a few years ago.

It would have been especially nice to have Rick Diepietro or Ryan Miller in this tournament. They're free, I don't know why they didn't play.

That is a genuninely spectacular own goal; I can't recall ever seeing anything like it.

Did anyone watch the final? Did the Canadians choke in the third period, or were the Russians just better?