Olympic Hockey: How Can We Trim The Fat?

If you are a Canadian or a fan of hockey, you have taken the time to tune into the Olympic Hockey Tournament.

Thus far, we are yet to witness anything that resembles a real hockey game, in fact, for the most part, we have witnessed a select few teams dismantle their opponents, most notably in the Woman’s tournament; especially Canada’s 18-0 record breaking drubbing of Slovakia.

To be fair, the men’s tournament hasn’t exactly been riveting thus far either. Tuesday marked the beginning of the men’s games featuring Team USA vs. Switzerland, which, despite its 3-1 outcome, was a complete bore, followed by an 8-0 win for Canada vs. Norway and a convincing 8-2 win for the Russians over Latvia.

Needless to say, if you are a fan of Russia and Canada on the men’s side or Canada and the United States on the woman’s side, you were ecstatic that your Country won their games, albeit with little to no resistance from your opponents.

With that in mind, have we allowed the Olympic Hockey Tournament to become all but a joke? The fact is, other than a miracle once every decade or so, there are no Countries that can match Canada or the United States in the Woman’s competition.

Both the Canadian and American programs are miles ahead of Russia, Slovakia, Switzerland, Sweden, China, Japan and Finland’s. In fact, given Canada’s and the United States dominance in this event, there are many calling for woman’s hockey at the Olympics to be abolished.

There is some merit to that thought, after all, having Team USA and Canada continually  embarrassing the other nations is not what the Olympics was based on.

Comparatively, there are a number of Countries participating in on the men’s side that simply don’t need or don’t deserve to be included. Some will argue that in order for the bottom feeders to get better they need to face top competition, but when is enough, enough?

Outside of beating themselves, Norway, Latvia, Belarus and Germany are not going to beat anyone at this tournament; miracles aside, which, admittedly, have happened before.

It would appear that change is needed in both the men’s and woman’s pools. Sure, it’s pretty fun to watch Canada and Russia put up eight goals apiece, but what good does it do either team?

More importantly, what if the likes of Canada’s Sidney Crosby, Russia’s Alex Ovechkin or Sweden’s Henrik Lundqvist- the very reason fans are tuning into this tournament were to get injured playing Latvia? What a waste that would be!

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