RANK: CAN vs RUS vs USA vs SWE

[RapidKnight]

Yeah, I don't know about that.

Is Canada B really that much (if any) better than USA B? I'd say both the A and B teams are pretty close.

Canada B
Skinner-Barzal-Thomas
RNH-Scheifele-Cozens
Benn-Suzuki-Batherson
Couture-PLD-Konecny

Morrisey-Hamilton
Reilly-Doughty
Parayko-Dobson

Fleury
Kuemper


USA B
JT Miller-Larkin-Pavelski
DeBrincat-Zegras-Tuch
Kreider-Benier-Terry
Keller-Hayes-Wheeler

Sanderson-Carlson
Fowler-Faulk
McDonagh-Pesce

Demko
Gibson


-----------

Canada A
Stamkos-McDavid-MacKinnon
Machard-Crosby-Bergeron
Huberdeau-Point-Marner
Horvat-Tavares-Stone

Toews-Makar
Theodore-Pietrangelo
Chabot-Ekblad

Hart
Jarry


USA A
M Tkachuk-Matthews-Kane
Robertson-Thompson-Gaudreau
Connor-Hughes-Caufield
Guentzel-Eichel-B. Tkachuk

Slavin-Fox
Hughes-McAvoy
Werenski-Jones

Oettinger
Hellebuyck

Pelech would certainly make Canada B.

 

[WhiskeyYerTheDevils]

Pelech would certainly make Canada B.

Heck, I'd have him on Canada A. He's their best shutdown option.

 

[authentic]

I think the US is the most well-rounded.

The fact that the NHL isn't taking advantage of this opportunity for a best-on-best victory for the States blows my mind.

I feel like these games would easily be more entertaining than any international games we’ve ever seen

 

[authentic]

Goaltending:
Russia > USA = Sweden > Canada

Defense:
Canada >Sweden = USA >>>Russia

Offense:
Canada >> Russia >= USA >> Sweden


Overall:
Canada
USA
Russia
Sweden


Canada's goaltending is a question mark but that center depth is pretty much untouchable. Defense is arguably the best too.
USA is strong everywhere but lack the high-end talent of Canada and Russia. Still, second best team.
Russia has high-end talents and is IMO the strongest in net but that defense team would get feasted on by top 2 teams.
Sweden lacks depth in front that Canada and USA has. Good goaltending and really solid defense, has always.

What high end talent does Russia have that USA lacks?

 

[Tkachuk Norris]

CAN
US of A
RUS
SWE

Pretty close cause Canada lacks a clear cut elite goalie

Mackinnon, McDavid, Marner, Bergeron, Marchand, Crosby, Pietrangelo, Makar etc. are still the best of the best in the league. I think they just have more of the elite two-way players.

USA is closer than they’ve ever been though.

 

[authentic]

Finlands C-team just won against all thoose players at WC 2yrs back. C-depth is crucial and Finland has a far superior team witrh 200ft players. Thoose Russian players play offense only except Nichuskin.

C-depth Barkov, Aho, Hintz, Granlund, Lundell are all 200ft players. Russia has Malkin... Suddenly C-depth doesnt matter now? Usually teams with better C-dept and 2-way play win. We have it.


Heiskanen is a far better D, than any Russian. Lindell, Hakanpää, Määttä are all on par with that Russian D. Ristolainen wouldnt even be on the team.

Vasi has been shit this season and Shesty not much better.

As a team, Finland play better than Russia 90% of the time. In the last 2 decades we have won Russia much more than they and our team is infact a lot better now. 2-way play very much counts. Russia cant run-n-gun against us.

Here is your superior Russia with 0 goals against our C-team:


Russia

	j#	Name	Pos
	88	VASILEVSKI Andrei	GK
	40	GEORGIEV Alexander	GK

Line 1

	98	SERGACHYOV Mikhail	D
	89	NESTEROV Nikita	D
	25	GRIGORENKO Mikhail	F
	11	MALKIN Yevgeni	F
	63	DADONOV Yevgeni	F

Line 2

	9	ORLOV Dmitri	D
	22	ZAITSEV Nikita	D
	8	OVECHKIN Alexander	F
	92	KUZNETSOV Yevgeni	F
	77	KAPRIZOV Kirill	F

Line 3

	3	KHAFIZULLIN Dinar	D
	4	GAVRIKOV Vladislav	D
	97	GUSEV Nikita	F
	15	ANISIMOV Artyom	F
	86	KUCHEROV Nikita	F

Line 4

	61	ZADOROV Nikita	D
	94	BARABANOV Alexander	F
	71	KOVALCHUK Ilya	F
	13	ANDRONOV Sergei	F
	7	TELEGIN Ivan	F

Head coach

VOROBYOV Ilya

He. Co.

Finland

	j#	Name	Pos
	30	LANKINEN Kevin	GK
	45	OLKINUORA Jussi	GK

Line 1

	55	OHTAMAA Atte	D
	4	LEHTONEN Mikko	D
	20	OJAMAKI Niko	F
	21	TYRVAINEN Juhani	F
	25	RAJALA Toni	F

Line 2

	28	JOKIHARJU Henri	D
	40	LINDBOHM Petteri	D
	24	KAKKO Kaapo	F
	65	MANNINEN Sakari	F
	82	PESONEN Harri	F

Line 3

	7	KASKI Oliwer	D
	70	MIKKOLA Niko	D
	71	KUUSELA Kristian	F
	76	SALLINEN Jere	F
	19	SAVINAINEN Veli-Matti	F

Line 4

	58	HAKANPAA Jani	D
	50	KOIVISTO Miika	D
	12	ANTTILA Marko	F
	91	LAMMIKKO Juho	F
	41	KIVIRANTA Joel	F

Head coach

JALONEN Jukka

He. Co.

Actually you make good points here. Head to head there’s a good chance this Finland team would win.

 

[Bouboumaster]

What high end talent does Russia have that USA lacks?

Kucherov, Panarin and Kaprizov is hard to argue against

Thompson is possibly one of them but the russian trio is proved and certified. Also, even tho he has a so-so season right now, I still consider Vasilevsky as the best goaltender on planet Earth

Still think that USA would roll over them because they are mighty deep and is the only team that would give Canada problems

 

[authentic]

Kucherov, Panarin and Kaprizov is hard to argue against

Thompson is possibly one of them but the russian trio is proved and certified. Also, even tho he has a so-so season right now, I still consider Vasilevsky as the best goaltender on planet Earth

Still think that USA would roll over them because they are mighty deep and is the only team that would give Canada problems

Thompson? Are you forgetting about Gaudreau and Matthews or what

Matthews is better than Kucherov and Gaudreau is better than Panarin. Remains to be seen if Thompson keeps this up but if he does he’ll be right there with Kaprizov too.

 

[Bouboumaster]

Thompson? Are you forgetting about Gaudreau and Matthews or what

Matthews is better than Kucherov and Gaudreau is better than Panarin. Remains to be seen if Thompson keeps this up but if he does he’ll be right there with Kaprizov too.

I completly forgot about Matthews lol
He's one, yeah haha

 

[RapidKnight]

Heck, I'd have him on Canada A. He's their best shutdown option.

Completely agree. No excuse for leaving a top 10 defenseman off of Canada’s top top 12 which is why I addressed this again.

 

[garbageteam]

Canada head and shoulders the best.

On paper the USA might be second but quite frankly when a true tournament rolls around I would be more than willing to place a wager that they finish lower than second place. Way higher than 50/50 that one of the other European top teams will edge them out and the USA consistently finds a way to underperform the sum of their parts. Russia is a bit of a mess even if they were allowed to participate again, so I'd bet either a full strength Sweden or Finland would be likelier than not to beat the US team.

 

[Bouboumaster]

Crosby is IMO the 5th best players ever.
There's only one players in his generation that breath the same air (he's also Russian but it's def mot Datsyuk).

Datsyuk was great and all, but some people must come back to reality

 

[Kaiden Ghoul]

Dobson is not American

 

[ViD]

Russia has the best wingers and goalies in the world.

Russia’s defense is actually underrated as it’s drastically improved over the last few years.

It’s the centers that are the main weakness. The depth is just abysmal

 

[blundluntman]

For the love of God bring back the Olympics already

 

[bert]

Canada
Russia
USA
Sweden

Would also definitely swap out Chabot for one of Ekblad or Doughty, not even sure if he's worthy of a reserve spot at this point

He's been unreal lately. After he took some time off, he was clearly playing hurt. 10 bad games doesnt erase the previous 200. He isnt a lock to start in the top 6 but he should absolutely be on the team. He is the main reason the sens have played well recently even with all the injuries. When he was bad so were they. They go as he goes which shows how important/good he can be.

This is a tough one, too bad Finlands team isnt out there either. All teams good enough to win in a single game elimination for sure.

 

[bert]

Check again. Finland has far superior C-depth than Russia and defense on par.

Russia has a much better D core. Finland is absolutely in the mix though they could win too.

 

[bert]

You can't deny facts, Canada is obviously the right choice in this poll to be 2nd best after Finland

WORLD RANKING
The IIHF World Ranking is a tool to reflect the long-term quality of the countries' national team programme.

2022 MEN'S WORLD RANKING

����������

RANK	TEAM	PTS	MOV
1	FIN	4130	0
2	CAN	3990	0
3	RUS	3935	0
4	USA	3775	0
5	SWE	3675	0
6	CZE	3650	+1
7	SUI	3590	-1
8	SVK	3590	0
9	GER	3555	0
10	DEN	3335	0

This is nice and all but means absolutely nothing in this scenario.

 

[Hanji]

Canada head and shoulders the best.

On paper the USA might be second but quite frankly when a true tournament rolls around I would be more than willing to place a wager that they finish lower than second place. Way higher than 50/50 that one of the other European top teams will edge them out and the USA consistently finds a way to underperform the sum of their parts. Russia is a bit of a mess even if they were allowed to participate again, so I'd bet either a full strength Sweden or Finland would be likelier than not to beat the US team.

Nobody is head and shoulders better than anyone else among USA, SWE, CAN, FIN and RUS.
The difference is razor thin. Sure there are favorites, but anyone could realistically beat anyone else on any given day.

 

[BringTheReign]

Canada’s goaltending is weak enough that their slight advantage at forward disappears. Makar is awesome, but I’d give the edge to USA on defense just barely as well.

 

[amnesiac]

Canada’s goaltending is weak enough that their slight advantage at forward disappears. Makar is awesome, but I’d give the edge to USA on defense just barely as well.

the thing is, when your D core is THAT good, your goaltending can be mediocre. Colorado was the perfect example last season. And even in 2014, Price didnt exactly have a difficult tournament.

Its not like Jarry and Kuemper are bad goalies by any means, but yes, on paper, Russia takes the cake. But I think goalies like Markstrom or Hellebuyck could have bad games maybe just as easily as Canada's. Its one game elimination.

 

[GeeoffBrown]

Pretty unfair for Canada to be able to run McDavid and Makar. I feel like I could be in net and that team would still at least win bronze

 

[Bouboumaster]

Russia has the best wingers and goalies in the world.

Russia’s defense is actually underrated as it’s drastically improved over the last few years.

It’s the centers that are the main weakness. The depth is just abysmal

Their defense is better than it was but it's clearly their weakness right now, as they aren't close of the other three teams in that regards

 

[Beerz]

Yeah, I don't know about that.

Is Canada B really that much (if any) better than USA B? I'd say both the A and B teams are pretty close.

Canada B
Skinner-Barzal-Thomas
RNH-Scheifele-Cozens
Benn-Suzuki-Batherson
Couture-PLD-Konecny

Morrisey-Hamilton
Reilly-Doughty
Parayko-Dobson

Fleury
Kuemper


USA B
JT Miller-Larkin-Pavelski
DeBrincat-Zegras-Tuch
Kreider-Benier-Terry
Keller-Hayes-Wheeler

Sanderson-Carlson
Fowler-Faulk
McDonagh-Pesce

Demko
Gibson


-----------

Canada A
Stamkos-McDavid-MacKinnon
Machard-Crosby-Bergeron
Huberdeau-Point-Marner
Horvat-Tavares-Stone

Toews-Makar
Theodore-Pietrangelo
Chabot-Ekblad

Hart
Jarry


USA A
M Tkachuk-Matthews-Kane
Robertson-Thompson-Gaudreau
Connor-Hughes-Caufield
Guentzel-Eichel-B. Tkachuk

Slavin-Fox
Hughes-McAvoy
Werenski-Jones

Oettinger
Hellebuyck

I'd have Samuelsson on team A before Jones.

 

[the_fan]

The Canada's center depth is stupid. Crosby and Bergeron bottom 6 centers LOL. Who can compete with that?