cheerupmurray
Registered User
I watched the entire game.
Unfortunately I think this shows what many have been saying for years. Russian hockey is on a serious decline, which is unfortunate. Canada exposed them at the Olympics. They have extremely poor defensive play and besides a few star players, their overall skill level is not nearly as good as it was in years past.
It's obvious that Russia is no longer in the top 3 nations for hockey, but I do hope they turn it around. They were seriously exposed at the Olympics in not only defense, but teamplay and coaching as well. Bykov is HORRIBLE.
Their players are also now being encouraged to play in a second rate league (KHL) instead of coming over to the top league in the world (NHL) to play against the best players in the world and improve their skill.
If I were to rank the top nations it would obviously be Canada, USA, and Sweden. I'm not even sure that Russia would be #4 anymore but that's likely where they sit right now. Hopefully they don't fall to much further down, but it's obvious that teams like Switzerland and Germany are still improving and that teams like Czechs, etc are all still doing well.
I watched the whole game and i saw russian players that didn't skate, didn't work hard and looked like they didn't care against a german team that did. This game shows that Russia is badly coached and have a lack of morale, but it say very little about the quality of russian hockey. It's not like Kovalchuk, Kulemin and Tyutin was awesome and the KHL-guys awful, it was a collective breakdown where the russians didn't put in any hard work.
To make bold statements about that this game shows that Russia is not one of the big hockey-nations anymore is kind of laughable. If Germany wins against a Russia that really fight for it and give it there best, then I would kind of agree with your rant.