The Management
Registered User
- Jun 8, 2009
- 1,783
- 1,797
I thought Lehner's remarks were petty and infantile. He blamed everything but his own team's failure to contain the Russian forwards, and I cannot envision how anybody looking at his comments with a shread of reason could construe them to be anything but a pot-shot at Canada. There's some animosity there that appears to be shared by a few (not all) fellow Swedes in this thread.
Both sides have their share of whiny kids - Sweden just happened to have one playing in net.
This just goes to show what we should all know about the sport by now - hockey is unpredictable. Sweden were the favorites to beat Russia; the Americans were probably the favorites to beat Canada; and there were a number of Swedish posters who thought Canada were the favorites to beat Sweden. All those assumptions were based on solid reasons. The Russian team had two loses, the American team had many returning players and were last year's champions, and despite all the asinine derailment in this thread, Canada iced a legitimate threat that I'm sure no team (or fan) failed to recognize. We were leading in the gold medal game until the halfway-mark, then completely stopped playing. Stopped dominating the boards, stopped our cycle game down-low, stopped racing the Russian players to the puck. Russia deserves accolades on showing a lot of heart and getting the win; kids like Kitsyn and Kusnetsov were very impressive, but to act like Canada wasn't a hair's stroke away from gold is a mistake. They definitely played a major part in their own unmaking.
Anyways, congrats to all three teams for showing a lot of heart this tournament. Hopefully we'll see these kids in the pros someday competing against one another for their respective clubs.
Both sides have their share of whiny kids - Sweden just happened to have one playing in net.
This just goes to show what we should all know about the sport by now - hockey is unpredictable. Sweden were the favorites to beat Russia; the Americans were probably the favorites to beat Canada; and there were a number of Swedish posters who thought Canada were the favorites to beat Sweden. All those assumptions were based on solid reasons. The Russian team had two loses, the American team had many returning players and were last year's champions, and despite all the asinine derailment in this thread, Canada iced a legitimate threat that I'm sure no team (or fan) failed to recognize. We were leading in the gold medal game until the halfway-mark, then completely stopped playing. Stopped dominating the boards, stopped our cycle game down-low, stopped racing the Russian players to the puck. Russia deserves accolades on showing a lot of heart and getting the win; kids like Kitsyn and Kusnetsov were very impressive, but to act like Canada wasn't a hair's stroke away from gold is a mistake. They definitely played a major part in their own unmaking.
Anyways, congrats to all three teams for showing a lot of heart this tournament. Hopefully we'll see these kids in the pros someday competing against one another for their respective clubs.
