Women’s Hockey: The Gap Between Rich and Poor
Perusing the internet day after day for hockey articles can get a little repetitive, but it is all worth it when you come across those tidbits of information that are truly jaw-dropping. In preparation for the Olympic hockey tournament, here at Hockeycentric we have been researching the procedure and schedule of this highly-anticipated affair. In this process, we found some very interesting facts about Women’s international hockey tournaments.
Women’s hockey these days isn’t much of a competition. Don’t get me wrong – these games can be just as exciting as the men’s tournament, but women’s hockey is not an international sport. In reality, the only two countries in the world with competitive women’s hockey teams are Canada and the United States. The IIHF Women’s World Hockey Championship has occurred roughly bi-annually since 1990, and the only two teams to ever compete in the Finals have been Canada and the USA.
Since the inception of Women’s hockey at the Olympics in 1998, the story has been pretty much the same, both in the Olympics and the World Championships – Canada and the US compete for the Gold, year after year.
But in 2006, Sweden shocked the world by beating the United States in the semi-finals, advancing to the Gold Medal game versus Canada. This marked the first time that the finals of an international women’s hockey tournament was not a Canada-USA affair. More importantly, it was the first time the USA women’s hockey team had ever lost to an opponent other than Canada. Ever. Canada has still only been beaten by the USA, and shows no signs of slowing down.
That last tidbit of information was not the jaw-dropping moment that inspired this article. That came when researching the women’s hockey qualification tournament for the 2010 Olympics. Qualification works like this: The top 6 teams in the IIHF World Ranking after the 2008 Women’s World Hockey Championship (Canada won that one too) would automatically qualify. The remaining two spots in would be determined by a qualification tournament. Teams ranked 13th and below were divided into two groups where they played in a preliminary qualification round in September 2008. The two group winners from this round advanced to a second qualification round, where the teams ranked 7th through 12th joined them. In the second qualifying round, played in November 2008, the teams were again divided into two groups. The two group winners China and Slovakia advanced to the Olympic Ice Hockey Tournament.
The first round of the qualification tournament involved such hockey powerhouses as Slovakia, Latvia, Italy, Croatia and Bulgaria. I’m not sure who was on the ice for Bulgaria, but they lost their three games by scores of 41-0, 30-1 and 82-0. YES, 82-0! Is this even possible!? This means that their opponent, Slovakia, had to score a goal every 43 seconds. At the end of the first period, the score was 31-0. The game was played in front of a whopping 37 fans at Liepaja Arena in Western Latvia. Granted, details around the goaltending situation are still fuzzy (there weren’t too many reporters in the crowd) but it is safe to say that the score would have been lower if they had played “posts”.
We don’t mean to make a mockery of Women’s hockey. But until the rest of the countries can compete at an elite level, let’s pare down the Women’s tournament at both the Olympic and World Championship level. The only teams to earn any type of medal in these tournaments have been Canada, USA, Finland, Sweden and Russia. To this day, these tournaments include 8 teams, and it is pretty clear that the more successful teams feast on the Bulgarias of the world.
The IIHF brass should give their heads a shake and make this a 4-team tournament. The round robin can still be three games apiece, and the 1st seed will play the 4th, and so on. The final results will be exactly the same as they would in the 8 team tournament, and will avoid some hurt feelings on behalf of the losing squads. And it will definitely create some more fierce competition for the 3rd and 4th spots in the tournament. After 20 years of elite women’s hockey tournaments, it is clear that the hierarchy of power here is not going to change.
Jacob Weiland on Mon, 1st Feb 2010 9:56 pm
I would rather watch an international Pog competition than women's hockey. There is simply no competition. Why not follow the U17 style of tournament by dividing both Canada and the United States into different zones, i.e. Atlantic, Ontario, Quebec (because they think they are different), West, etc? Perhaps this will allow for a better and more interesting tournament.