IIHF Championship

For those who don't know the IIHF(international ice hockey federation) have a round robin tournament every year around the same time as the Stanley Cup playoffs. This year the Championship was won by Russia which shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that was watching the IIHF games this year.

Russia essentially had their Olympic team out there as nearly every top Russian player in the NHL had been eliminated in the playoffs as apposed to the other members of the "Big Four" (Canada, USA and Sweden) who were all missing some of their top players who were either still participating in the Stanley Cup playoffs or were sidelined due to injures.

This I found was very apparent in team Canada's case (if you even want to call them that). I'm not sure if you could really call them Team Canada when your missing players like Crosby, Giroux, Toews, Thorton, Price, Weber and many other top Canadian players. The USA was also missing some star players that could have made the difference in Quick, Parise and Brown who are still battling it out in the Stanley Cup playoffs, not to mention Sweden who had to do without the Sedin Twins and Henrick Lundqvist all these players can be game breakers when they're on their game, and as for team Russia I can't think of a single star player for them that wasn't able to play so if you ask me it's no surprise they won.

Something that both bothered me and surprised me though was when one of the commentators during a game mentioned how other national teams were starting to catch up with the Big 4 because of the upset of Canada, USA and Sweden earlier in the tournament. I'm shocked what a professional would mention that when anyone who looked at the teams rosters with a half sense of hockey could tell that  Canada, USA and Sweden weren't anywhere near the best they could be. It's not to take away from the other national teams there's some great players that come from places like Slovakia, Finland, Czech Republic etc. but those countries are still some time away before they have enough talent to compare to a full fledged team Canada, USA, Russia or Sweden team.

On the bright side Canada did win Gold in the Woman's!