All I can say u must be severely delusional and prefer to pass personal misconceptions off for a fact, e.g ignoring the NHL and KHL statistics for the previous (not 2010-2011) seasons and most importanting, igonring Russia's achivements over the past four years. Well, if your memory refuses to serve u right or if there are some other reasons for your criminally selective use of statistics, I'll remind u that
1) as recently as 2008 and 2009 we won two consecutive golds at the WC (notably, one of them being in Quebec, right during the Canadian celebrations of the 100th anniversary of the sport), also claimed sliver and bronze. And it's worth reminding u that we did not win a single major title since 1994 thru 2006;
2) besides, don't u forget, that the team described by u as being at @an all-time low@ HAS BEATEN your "mighty, powerful and unbeatable"
squad
5 times out of 6 since 2006 at all major hockey tournmanets - I guess we were much helped by the ever "declining and deteriorating" quality of our game
By the way, u should seriously ask yourself how is it that your beloved "all-mighty"
Canada cannot beat Russia EVEN when it's so OBVIOUSLY AND UNDENIABLY BADLY coached as it was at these past worlds???
3) third, for two years in a row we won all stages of the Euro Tour tournament, once running a streak of 27?! consecutive wins (counting World Championship and Euro Tour and victories) - the second best result in hockey history.
4) Over the last years we have also seen the establishment of the KHL, VHL (roughly, the Russian analog of the AHL) and most critically - the MHL - the junior hockey league which have already paid dividend: cause for the first time over the past several years we won the Super Series played between Canadian and Russian youths, we also beat u at the WJC to claim the title (after returning home empty-handed for quite a while) and won a myriad of exhibition matches against various OHL and Amercian youth teams in the past season.
So, if u look OBJECTIVELY at the big picture rather then tamper with facts to fit your story, what u will see is that Russian hockey began to get out of the slump it found itself in after the collapse of the USSR, loss of national identity and mass migration of our best players overseas. Only an extremely BIASED and even more extremely subjective individual (btw, not surprisingly a canandian, since candians tend to jump out of their pants to downplay all our victories and achievements and to blow theirs out of all proportions) , would argue that we made great strides over the past 4-5 years, compared to the sad and pathetic picture we saw in the 1994-2006 seasons.
Having said that, it's undeniable that after the rise of 2007-2009, beginning from the fiasco in Vancouver and ending with the latest failure in Bratislava, our national team did lose in quality of its performance. However, on the one hand, that loss was PREDOMINANTLY due to the coaching staff who began resting on their laurels instead of continuing to work hard and generate new ideas, and on the other, this recent downfall in quality and results MUST BE SEEN IN PERSPECTIVE, and weighed up agaisnt our recent achievements that came after a lengthy futile and gold-less period, namely: the resounding bounce-back of 2007-2009, continuing success at the Euro Tours, consecutive victories over Canada - our major rival, victory at the WJC, and establishment of new Russian leagues.
Winding up, I think we are clearly going in the right direction and the most pressing issue now is to make the right choice of the head coach for the national team. Other than that I think our future looks bright, at least by far brighter than 4-5 years ago
.