Looking Back: Why Russia Did So Bad At The Olympics

In the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, Russia's Mens Ice Hockey team under-achieved at the least and did not live up to the expectations they were given by many critics.

                  Russia were favored to go the distance and make it to the gold medal game if not win the gold medal. And considering the amount of talent they had in their top six or even top nine forwards, those assumptions looked like they should have been fairly accurate.

                  Russia saw a rather early departure from Vancouver. Now, we can sit here and talk about the reasons Russia failed to dominate from a bunch of different perspectives like 'Russia got out-played by the North American Style of Hockey' or 'Russia buckled under the pressure', 'Ovechkin sucks.' Maybe Russia's dynamic style of hockey did get out-played by the North American style of hockey, or maybe Russia did buckle under pressure, but the one major reason why the Russians failed to capture a medal, was because of the coaching. Coach Vyacheslav Bykov did not do a good job at coaching his team. Bykov was a great player, arguably the best Russian player ever, however, he is like the Wayne Gretzky of Russia, he was a great player, but just cannot seem to have any success when it comes to coaching. When you have Ovechkin, Malkin, Kovalchuk, Datsyuk, Semin, Federov, Radulov, Morozov, Markov, Gonchar, Nabokov & Bryzgalov, you should be able to have far more success then what Russia actually had in Vancouver. A great example of Bykov's costly coaching mistakes was in the crucial, much anticipated game between Russia & Canada. When Canada's Ryan Getzlaf, Dan Boyle, Rick Nash & Brenden Morrow all scored in just the first period, Russian goaltender Evgeni Nabokov should have been pulled and should have took a seat. He allowed four goals on twenty one shots. If Bykov knew what he was doing, he would have and SHOULD have given him the toss after the third goal from Rick Nash. Instead, he waited until it was a six to one lead in favor of the Canadians, & I mean what is the point of making a goalie switch when your team is already out of it half way through the game with 17'000+ people against you and your team. Russia ended up out scoring Canada two to one when Bryzgalov entered in goal, making eighteen saves on nineteen shots. On that same game, their best defence-men Andrei Markov played only fifteen minutes and fifty two seconds on the ice. Alexander Semin only played thirteen minutes and thirty seven seconds and if you can't do the math, that is not too much ice time for players like Semin & Federov. Yes, Russia could not get it together in that particular game but for the most part of the tournament, coach Bykov is the main reason to blame. Not saying he is the ONLY reason, but he is the MAIN reason that Russia took an early exit from the tournament.