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Women's Hockey

hockeyfan1

hockeyfan1

New member
The Women's hockey began with wins today by Canada and USA.

Team Canada defeated Team Switzerland 5-0, outshooting the Swiss 69-19.  Swiss goaltender Florence Schelling, who plays in the Canadian Women's Hockey League with the Brampton Thunder and is a teammate of Team Canada members Gilliam Apps & Jayna Hefford, had more than her fair share of work cutout for her and was easily one of the game's standouts.

Poulin, Labonte, Watchon, Wickenheiser and Larocque were the Canadian scorers.

Shannon Szabados had the shutout.

Canada's next game is versus Finland Tuesday.


More here:
http://olympics.cbc.ca/news/article/canada-hockey-women-blank-switzerland-olympic-opener.html



Elsewhere, Team USA beat Team Finland 3-1, on goals by Stack, Knight and Carpenter.  While the Finns kept pressing despite being down 1-0 at one point, Finnish goalkeeper Raty shut out the US shooters for all of 27 minutes before the Americans scored on an "ugly" goal, a.k.a. funny bounce and all.  In fact, two of the US goals were scored that way, at the expense of some Finnish mistakes.

Oh well, a win is a win no matter how it's done. 

Team USA's next game is Tuesday against Switzerland.


For more:
http://olympics.cbc.ca/news/article/holds-off-finland-women-hockey-opener.html
 
I watched the second half of Canada?s game, it seemed that the girls stopped shooting on purpose not to completelly embarass the Swiss. Classy!
 
I've never really seen much women's hockey but would it be fair to say that Canada and the USA are a step or two above any other nation? Or are there others who could challenge?
 
Arn said:
I've never really seen much women's hockey but would it be fair to say that Canada and the USA are a step or two above any other nation? Or are there others who could challenge?
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I think the other typical hockey nations are making strides, but, yeah, right now, the US and Canada are on a different level than the rest.
 
bustaheims said:
Arn said:
I've never really seen much women's hockey but would it be fair to say that Canada and the USA are a step or two above any other nation? Or are there others who could challenge?
Click to expand...

I think the other typical hockey nations are making strides, but, yeah, right now, the US and Canada are on a different level than the rest.
Click to expand...

So much so that I think both the U.S. and Canada are careful now not to run up the score against any other opposition for fear of highlighting how imbalanced a field it is.  I remember talk in the past of cutting women's hockey from the Olympics because it's not widely competitive enough.
 
In early action today, Sweden beat Japan 1-0.

Meantime, a packed crowd at the Shayba Arena saw Team Russia beat Team Germany 4-1.

Source:  Sportsnet 
 
wmn-Infograph-e.jpg
 
CarltonTheBear said:
And Canada pots two in the 3rd. Everybody calm down.
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Finland is a real medal threat though, on another day they could pull off the big upset.
 
3-0 Canada over Finland final score.

The Finns were playing a physical game against the Canadians while Finnish goaltender Raty faced a game total of 30 shots.  Still,.Team Canada prevailed on goals by Agosta-Marciano, Hefford, and Johnson, scored all in the third period.

Despite what was quite possibly Team Finland's best effort to try to unseat Team Canada in this game, it shows the Canadian women will still be a pretty tough bunch to beat so far.

Next game is Wednesday against USA.

More on the story:
http://olympics.cbc.ca/news/article/canadian-women-hockey-team-survives-scare-against-finland.html
 
Olympic women's hockey was only introduced in 1998; girls born that year are only turning 16 this year.  If that inspired a significant amount of interest in the sport outside of the U.S. and Canada, we might not be seeing the effects until the next games or the one after that, when those girls would be upwards of 20 or 24.

I hope it had an impact, and that there's more even competition on the way.  I enjoy women's hockey as much as the men's, and the more games played the better.
 
It definitely seems more competitive to me.  I don't know the entire history of men's ice hockey in the Olympics to compare it to, but I'm sure there were lopsided scores introducing new countries into that.  Many of these countries never had women's leagues whatsoever, but now they're at the point where they've actually beaten one of the top 2 teams.  Sure it's still a fluke, but it wouldn't be possible at all if progress hadn't been made.

I hope they keep it in.
 
Potvin29 said:
It definitely seems more competitive to me.  I don't know the entire history of men's ice hockey in the Olympics to compare it to, but I'm sure there were lopsided scores introducing new countries into that.  Many of these countries never had women's leagues whatsoever, but now they're at the point where they've actually beaten one of the top 2 teams.  Sure it's still a fluke, but it wouldn't be possible at all if progress hadn't been made.

I hope they keep it in.
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My only concern is that the Canadian/US teams are playing down to their competition to make sure that things stay competitive.  There is a pretty loud background voice calling for the sport to be pulled from the Olympics because of that top-heavy component, and to be honest, aside from Canadian Nationalism, I think it's a reasonable argument.

I hope its not the case, but something telling might be what happens if one of Canada/US actually loses in one of these games and then we see the response the next game.

It would be great if the sport is legitimately getting better though.

Last year at the IIHF Women's World Championships Canada went 4-1 (losing in the gold medal match to the US).  They beat Switzerland 13-0, Finland 8-0 and Russia 8-1 in the semi-finals.  They traded 3-2 games with the United States.

 
Even today Canada was 0-0 with Finland into the 3rd and only won 3-0.

This is another perspective on it from Jennifer Botterill, and she thinks one reason the gap isn't closing as quickly is that, while other countries are improving so are Canada and the US: http://olympics.cbc.ca/blogs/author/jennifer-botterill/article/the-gap-closing-women-hockey.html
 
Canada ties it 1-1 and then takes the lead 2-1.

Love it that USA has a Kessel and Bozek on their team.
 
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