So much of another obsessed biased drivel.
That's the problem, that's what you don't realize. The people you think you are missing are so insignificant compared to who others are missing. First off, your rotating AHL defensemen, no one envies them. I know what contracts Grabarenko and Yevenko are on, don't worry, they'll never be NHL regulars, Yevenko is role player and a terrible one at that who in two years won't even be in the KHL. Grabarenko will be in the KHL soon, quite likely next year. You of all people should know that you've had Korobov. But you never realize that who you're missing is so insignificant, even the people you named are insignificant when the US passes up 180 NHL players to give college kids the experience but oh you left behind one now lower half NHLer...that's just a terrible comparison. Idk what U20 team you saw from Belarus the one I saw was the slaughtered calf. You know nothing about the Austrian program. You just saw the weak 98 class in one game. 5 austrians have been CHL drafted in 2 years, only 2 Belorussians have. Austrians have been drafted in 3 straight years for the USHL, only one Belorussian has and he never made it out of the Belarus local U20. Austrians are burgeoning with prospects in the Swiss and Swedish leagues, Belarus only has kids playing in Russia and the good ones become Russian. Their U16 team was a goal away from 2nd in the 6 nations tournament and beat Slovakia. The U14 team won a Canadian tournament, first invite team to do so. You don't have the facts on Austria so don't guess, the fact that they are rising is unquestionable, especially at the senior men's level. Dinamo Raubichi for Belarus went, wait for it, 0-40-0-4 in the MHL. Latvia had more CSS guys, there are more outlets for the Latvian program. Believe what you want, I'll be sitting here smiling.
Wait? All this Belarussian talent and Latvian nobodies win a game against them?
a handful? lmao! could you list those russian born players, please? it's obvious you know little about belarusian hockey. ok, i'll do it for you: stepanov and filichkin - 2 players on the current team BLR roster - that's a pretty handful, isn't it?
the funny thing is that nowadays this team is more canadian than russian 
why only russia? usa can steal players as well
hey, yanks, give us back alex galchenyuk!!!Lol you mean the Alex Galchenyuk who was born in America, went back to Russia for a while and then moved back to America to play hockey?why only russia? usa can steal players as well
He went on to give a list...and he listed more than 2 so you should probably address that if you disagree...
Exactly, you just lost against our B team.
You do realize you played against our 7th string goalie from the Hungarian league and that we're missing 15-20 players? You might have trouble beating Hungary with a showing like this.KlichkoBro said:
You're missing the point. There are only 2 countries where the World Champs are the highlight of the entire year - Russia and Belarus. The only other countries sending their A rosters are the ones that don't get to play in the World Champs very often or that usually don't play at this level of competition (Kazakhstan, Hungary, Slovenia, Austria, etc.)
The last time Belarus played at the U18 WJC was 6 years ago, and you lost against Latvia at that time.
You haven't won a single point at the WJC level during the last decade. We have 2 points in 2 games in Grand Forks so far. You really should stop projecting your fantasies.
his parents are belarusian. in fact, his dad was also a hochey player, a CF, who was born in minsk, started his career in dinamo minsk and had been a belarus NT player for the period 1998-2005.
Means a lot if your local league isn't an NHL draft feeder. You probably haven't been on the scene for mid-major program development but for mid-major programs we're not like Russia where people come to us to scout us. Being CHL/USHL drafted from a mid-major country is comparable to being NHL drafted by a country which receives scouting attention. Russian, Swedish, and Finnish teams have alternative options, however, these kids have no better options. Ranking the mid-majors it is fairly effective however with a country like Switzerland getting more, then a country like Latvia, then a country like Italy likely won't get any...
There was a time when there was an intense competition going on between Latvia and Belarus, but that was back in the 90s/early 00s.
I usually get fired up when someone talks like that about the Latvian national team, but this guy is so out of touch, I don't even know where to start. I'm mostly confused right now, to be honest.
First of all, I truly don't know anyone in Latvia who would be jealous of Belarus, and, in fact, most people in Latvia bring up Belarus as an example of what path not to take in terms of developing our hockey programme. It's a team that has always relied on import players. We diverged from that same path in the 90s, when we also had a bunch of non-Latvian Soviet-born players (such as the now-head coach of the Russian national team Znaroks, etc.), but we focused on developing local players and have never looked back.
I can't really imagine myself cheering for a team that was mostly comprised of mercenaries, which is the case with Italy, Belarus and a couple of other countries.
But let's ignore that for a moment. What specifically should we be jealous of? We've been ranked higher than Belarus in the IIHF rankings more often than not. We've made the Olympics 16 years in a row. You haven't.
Half of our key players don't even want to play in the World Champs anymore, because the tournament has lost some of its prestige and its being reflected in TV ratings as well, so every year now recently we're sending a bunch of our B team players to take part. And yet we haven't been demoted from the Elite tier since we clinched the promotion in 1996. That's 20 years. Some of our players weren't even born back then. Only 6 other national teams have a longer streak going.
Belarus played against such hockey powerhouses as Belgium and the Netherlands as recently as 2004.
All of our national teams (men's NT, U-20, U-18) are playing in the Elite tier. You're playing a tier below at the junior level (both U-20 and U-18). No imports there.
We've had 9 NHL draftees since 2010, and there's more coming. You've had a grand total of 1 NHL prospect in that same time frame.
By most indicators we're superior to Belarus while having 5x less material to work with (a population of 1.9M vs. 10M), and we don't even have a single import playing for our national team, yet we are the ones who should be jealous of something? Are you serious right now?
