Quote:
Originally posted by 00111000
So the World Cup of Hockey starts August 30th and I’m fucking stoked. My first introduction to watching hockey was during the Olympics when I was a kid and I still love the world tournaments. We got Lots of big names for Canada, USA, Russia, Czechs and Sweden.
Canada arguably has the best goaltending with Brodeur,Belfour and Luongo, solid D and a hell of a lot of guys who can score. USA has a damn good team also but they’ve sucked it pretty hard in recent international games. Who’s going to start in net there? Esche had a good playoff run and DiPietro played damn well in his own right. The talent on Russia/Czech/Slovakia teams is looking sweet also, Russia has a guy from the superleague in net who should be exciting to watch, they also have speedy forwards in Datsyuk,Bure, Samsonov and Kovalchuk. What about Kiprusoff for Finland? He’s coming off a hot finals, will losing work against him? Or will he rebound brilliantly??? You get the picture and I can spout off names forever, so I'll save some for later.
We’ve got tons of hockey fans from all over that post here. Let’s hear who will walk away the champ! Of course I want USA to win, but I’ve gotten used to disappointment.
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Dissapointment? USA is the defending World Champ and Silver Medal winner in the most recent Olympics... not to mention our first World Junior Championship in history earlier this year.
The biggest problem USA Hockey faces is an older to middle aged line up. If the event was held more often (I think it's 8 years since the last one) I think we'd see some of the older guys sit this out, but some of them wanted to come back to defend their title and I don't really have a probem with that. They realize this will be their last International Game on a world stage. I'm talking about the Chelios, Leetch, Hull type guys. Our junior program is stacked with the best talent we've ever seen in the USA and we have a a great group that has just started retiring in the past few years... it's the 25-33 age group we will need to see a new star emerge from on team USA. I'd like it to be Drury, he's a natural winner and a great guy to root for.
What do you think of the goalie situation the US faces? I wouldn't mind seeing DiPietro be the man if Esche can't play. I think he is the future of Team USA net-minding.