Olympic women's hockey

[Puckdrop14]

Those floaters from far away that Szabados caught outfielder style shouldn't be included as actual shots on goal but I'm pretty sure they are based on the criterion of "If she wasn't there to stop them they might have dropped into the net." Quality shots were probably very even as was the whole game.

Watched the whole game and thought that the play was fairly even early on but the US started taking over in the 3rd. They were clearly better in the OT and were deserving of the win. Like most, I hate to see a game like this one end in a shootout but in this case, the hockey gods got it right.

[D2D]

Re: Olympic women's hockey

I thought they were tense, tentative or just out of sync for the first two periods of the game or so. They were a totally different team after M Lam scored. And the overtime? WOW, were they moving the puck! I'm certainly willing to give most of the credit to M Lam's goal for the change in play and to Rooney for the win. Stauber, not so much.

I thought Stauber did an excellent job moving players around and using his bench in the 4 on 4 overtime. The U.S. was the fresher and better team in the O.T., whereas Canada looked tired. Of course, this had nothing to do with coaching, it was just pure luck that the U.S. controlled play when the game was on the line.

[Arafel]

Re: Olympic women's hockey

I thought Stauber did an excellent job moving players around and using his bench in the 4 on 4 overtime. The U.S. was the fresher and better team in the O.T., whereas Canada looked tired. Of course, this had nothing to do with coaching, it was just pure luck that the U.S. controlled play when the game was on the line.

Your sarcastic quote actually has more merit than you realize. The U.S. was lucky to get to the OT and have a chance to dominate there.

[Nowheresville]

Re: Olympic women's hockey

I hope I'm wrong, but I'm with Tim here. It wasn't on NBC during prime-time; It was on 'after bed time' for at least half the country, on a cable channel that lots of people don't get. How many people even saw it?

This is the sad reality that this game will have very little impact on womens hockey overall. Really, they couldn't have picked a worse olympics to win gold from the "have an impact on the sport" perspective. The game didn't finish until about 2am eastern, and was shown on NBCSN, that alone severely limits the potential of eyeballs.

The good news: NBC says the game was the most watched late night broadcast in NBCSN History, so it had at least 2 million viewers (Best I can find, the previous record for NBCSN was an NHL playoff game that had 1.9M viewers). That also means for the second consecutive olympics, the Womens Gold Medal game will almost certainly be the most watched hockey game of the Olympics in the US, outperforming any mens game.

The bad news: That will still be less than half of the nearly 5 million people who watched the womens gold medal game in Sochi - which was show in the middle of the afternoon on NBC's main channel.

Of course, the exposure and publicity from the win can only help fuel the continued growth of the sport, but realistically, there just weren't enough people watching for this one game to have been a significant turning point moment that causes any major boost in interest outside of the Olympics.

[GTOWN]

Re: Olympic women's hockey

This is the sad reality that this game will have very little impact on womens hockey overall. Really, they couldn't have picked a worse olympics to win gold from the "have an impact on the sport" perspective. The game didn't finish until about 2am eastern, and was shown on NBCSN, that alone severely limits the potential of eyeballs.

The good news: NBC says the game was the most watched late night broadcast in NBCSN History, so it had at least 2 million viewers (Best I can find, the previous record for NBCSN was an NHL playoff game that had 1.9M viewers). That also means for the second consecutive olympics, the Womens Gold Medal game will almost certainly be the most watched hockey game of the Olympics in the US, outperforming any mens game.

The bad news: That will still be less than half of the nearly 5 million people who watched the womens gold medal game in Sochi - which was show in the middle of the afternoon on NBC's main channel.

Of course, the exposure and publicity from the win can only help fuel the continued growth of the sport, but realistically, there just weren't enough people watching for this one game to have been a significant turning point moment that causes any major boost in interest outside of the Olympics.

Let me start by saying that the Canadian networks were oversaturated with the women's hockey game; CBC, TSN and Sportsnet ALL carried the game!

Having said that I was really disappointed that the main NBC channel didn't. Despite wearing my maple leaf on my sleeve, I actually wanted to watch part of the game on the American channel so I could see how the "other side" was calling the game, no such luck....and no NBCSN up here.

[Russell Jaslow]

Re: Olympic women's hockey

How much of a bump does this give women's hockey here in the USA?

The same bump it gave in 1998...

[ne7minder]

Re: Olympic women's hockey

No, it's not, not while people are trying to credit Stauber as a coaching genius. Anybody with eyes could see the U.S. was outplayed for much of last night's game. They didn't even get a shot on net until seven minutes were gone in the game. The power play was anemic at best, they got overwhelmed in the second, and for most of the third it wasn't looking good either. Stauber didn't do anything right, and if USA Hockey keeps him, I expect the results of December through the round robin will be very common.

Whine whine whine. The last two US teams took home a silver & the one before that a bronze. Under this "rotten coach" the US won the world championship, the 4-Nations Cup and the Olympic gold. Who has done better? The funny thing is I question a lot of the things he did and wonder about his decisions but this continual attempt to trash him is BS. I'd be OK if he were replaced but nobody has a record as good against Canada so maybe you would be more convincing if you were less strident about it.

[ne7minder]

Re: Olympic women's hockey

The headline in the Pioneer Press sports page today: PARTY LIKE IT'S 1998.

I sincerely hope that when the next NCAA championship or Olympic games are broadcast there is someone other than A J Mieczko providing the analysis. She was irritatingly awful. Gigi Marvin might be an excellent replacement. I also hope that whoever broadcasts the Olympic women's hockey games in 4 years show as many flashbacks of a crying captain Poulin as they did of captain Duggan last night from 4 years ago.

It seemed like we saw the OT goal about 800 times during the game. NBC really beat that poor expired horse to dust

[thirdtime's . . .]

Re: Olympic women's hockey

“I’ll have a good scar, but it’s a pretty good one to have,” Decker said after the game.

That’s the best part of this article, which no one on this thread really needs to bother with, except for the photos. But be forewarned: #3 is a crime scene and #6 is NSFW (for sadists only).

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/s...ey-canada.html


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[ne7minder]

Re: Olympic women's hockey

Couldn’t see straight after the game last night (still can't), but wanted to post: Is everybody ready to give the Lams some luv? I guess so.

(Btw, that silver medal removal thing was ugly)

I said it earlier, we noticed a huge change in the Lams game out in Plymouth. They let the Canadian cheapshots go & focused on playing up to their talent. That made a big difference not just in the US game but in the Canadian's game as well. Without them raising to the bait Canada laid off crap that had done a lot to disrupt US play. If this change is them maturing it is wonderful. If it was coaching it was smart. They have the potential to be the best players on a team of outstanding players & they showed it this last year.

Watching them in the freshman year I commented that they were million dollar talents with 5 cent brains. They tooks stupid penalties at the wrong time again and again. (who was in the penalty box when Canada scored the power play game winner in 2014? Hint: her twin was not in the box)

[Blackbeard]

Re: Olympic women's hockey

“I’ll have a good scar, but it’s a pretty good one to have,” Decker said after the game.

That’s the best part of this article, which no one on this thread really needs to bother with, except for the photos. But be forewarned: #3 is a crime scene and #6 is NSFW (for sadists only).

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/21/s...ey-canada.html


.

"a fist to the face?"

[thirdtime's . . .]

Re: Olympic women's hockey

"a fist to the face?"

Yeah, I know, unbelievable. That's why a picture's worth more than a thousand wrong words.

[FiveHoleFrenzy]

Re: Olympic women's hockey

"a fist to the face?"

Yeah...That probably came from a Russian bot.

[Blackbeard]

Re: Olympic women's hockey

Got a friend who is of the opinion that women's hockey (and he's a great fan of the game) needs to differentiate itself from men's hockey in order to increase public interest...(peripheral observation: there were still quite a few empty seats during last night's game...anyone know the seating capacity?...nice arena by the way) in order for the game to grow.

Not to shock or offend anyone's sensibilities he just told me that his solution would be: 1st period = 5 on 5; 2nd period = 4 on 4; 3rd period = 3 on 3.

There's pros and cons to everything in life including that suggestion but radical change is often what is needed to get people's attention...actually, from a marketing point of view, it is a very effective way to get their attention...shock them into paying attention.

People will usually bad mouth radical change because it is different from the only thing or way of doing things that they've ever known (somehow mistakenly believing that the way things have "always" been done are part of the cosmic firmament). Familiarity bias.

Any thoughts or opinions on his suggestion?

[Russell Jaslow]

Re: Olympic women's hockey

The bad news: That will still be less than half of the nearly 5 million people who watched the womens gold medal game in Sochi - which was show in the middle of the afternoon on NBC's main channel.

At the time, that was the fourth highest rated hockey game of any kind ever shown on American TV.