If you watch Junior Hockey Belaurs shouldn't be an elevator team, they are potential-wise in the area of Latvia and Denmark. It's all about how they're able to develop their players.
GDT: Switzerland - Belarus
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ozo
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- Feb 24, 2010
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I'm too lazy to go into details, but this Belarus still won against Sweden and took Czech Republic to OT. Then the wheels simply came off due to absolutely terrible coaching and man management, now the team is simply going through motions to finish off the tournament. They are obviously not too good for occasional relegation, but this team is so much better than the level they have displayed in this tournament. They are making QF's in U18 tournament year after year, it's just a matter of time when prospects start to become good pros for senior team, so I refuse to the accept Belarus being viewed as being 15-17 ranked team in the world nearest future.
That said this tournament overall feels terrible.
It sure seems like you've subscribed to the North American approach of looking at kids tournaments and evaluating things based on how good the kids play. That is one way to look at things. Another would be to look at how many elite pros they produce.
Out of all the people, you should be aware that sending a bunch of prospects to CHL is not the best way to develop talent. Latvians did that and it didn't really work out, although many are still trying. It doesn't work, unless we're talking about elite prospects capable of playing in the NHL at the age of 20 or 21. How many of those does Belarus have? 1.
Austria has more, France has more. They simply can't produce talent. Having a deep team of 18 and 19 year olds has virtually nothing to do with success at the senior level. There are no indications of Belarus becoming a top 12 nation along with the likes of Denmark, Latvia, Germany, Slovakia.
ozo
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All I'm saying that there are more useful pros to be squeezed out of junior team that regularly makes top 8 in the world, than the one being mediocre at 1A level. We have had this discussion multiple times with you, kabidjan, SounAndFury and others, Belarus and other smaller hockey nations has a problem turning prospects into pros, but with more prospects they are bound to succeed more often than with less prospects just by pure luck even if we disregard other factors that benefit Belarus hockey at the moment.
My main point is that the number of prospects hasn't actually changed much. What changed is what the Belarusians did with their junior players:
a) they were sent to North America
b) they now have an all-junior team in their men's league, both U20 and U18 (Div1 and Div2)
What this does is creates the illusion that their entire programme has become more effective, because their national junior team plays together the entire season, which is obviously a huge bonus over all the other teams, which are assembled from a bunch of different teams and come together shortly before the tournament.
While sending a bunch of their kids to North America somehow creates the illusion that now they have magically started to pump out talent out of their system. That's simply not the case. Those same players would be playing for Belarusian teams if that decision had not been made. It's just that those same pieces were moved to a different place on the board, that's all. The number of pieces hasn't changed.
Nothing much has changed. The Belarusian league is not good enough and not competitive enough to produce talent domestically like Switzerland or Finland does. The Belarusians are way, way too isolated internationally to do what Latvia does by sending a bunch of their most talented kids to the best European hockey systems. That's when you can say 'they're bound to produce some elite pros'.
The Belarusians aren't bound to produce anything. I don't see any upwards trend here.
ozo
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You were right previously, I don't value CHL highly at all as a developmental league. But the fact is that more often than not Belarus kids that go through CHL actually become pro players and national team players in future, kids staying in Novopolotsk does not. Again, by sheer volume they are bound to produce more pros capable of playing modern hockey.
Small correction there is no U20 team anymore, there is U18 and U17 teams playing in what effectively is second and third tier of their hockey pyramid. Also you stubbornly chose to ignore that kids from these ''artificially boosted teams" how you pretty much put it now get drafted in larger quantities than stay 5-10 years ago. This year again minimum 3 kids are getting drafted, I understand that by itself it means nothing if they bust soon enough, but NHL scouts agree that there is something worth drafting which previously wasn't the case.
What you also fail to see is the geography where these kids are coming from, essentially all their hockey historically always have been Minsk centric with Grodno and later Novopolotsk chipping in a tiny bit. Nowadays due to arena boom of 00's talent is pulled out of places where it has never happened before. Again, increasing the pool and odds of getting lucky.
And lastly Belarussians are no longer foreigners in Russia. This is simply huge - less talent will trade their passports for advancing their future careers. Players like Kodola and Shostak comitting means a lot, same happens at kids level when Golubovich, one of SKA's U17 team leaders joined the team recently. So many players like Kabush, Zhuk, Petkov and previously mentioned senior debutants never played for them before which is a huge loss to smaller nation.
To sum it up, I never said Belarus is the next big thing or anything, but they are not future yo-yo team between elite and 1A. But you are wrong saying there are no good things happening in Belarussian hockey, their incompetent leadership might screw it all up like we see in this tournament, but their foundations and near future prospects look better than ever.
