Ice Hockey Metrics

Quick hits today, covering Friday’s and Saturday’s action. My Monday column at Puck Prospectus will wrap up the preliminary round action, and set up the secondary round games on Tuesday. PLEASE NOTE: I’ll be doing an online chat on Wednesday at 1 pm Eastern, hosted over at Baseball Prospectus. You can send your Olympic hockey (or NHL) questions in ahead of time.

Sweden 4, Belarus 2

No matter how smooth the Swedes look, a close shave here with Belarus is starting to make me wonder about rating them so highly going into the tournament. Hard to put your finger on exactly what the inefficiency is here. Too bad for Belarus that they’re missing their two top forwards – except for the bar fights they’re getting into.

Czech Republic 5, Latvia 2

So far, the Czechs–who will probably surprise me, like they did in 1998–have defeated a sloppy, penalty-taking Slovakia 3-1 and one of the worst two teams in the field, Latvia, by 5-2. They’re leading Group B, but I’m not 100% buying into the team. Vokoun, Kaberle, Jagr, Plekanec and Elias are all gamers, though.

Finland 5, Germany 0

We’ll see if it ultimately translates into a medal, but Finland is clicking as a team better than any other squad in Vancouver; they always seem to overachieve versus an apparent talent gap on paper. The Finland-Sweden rivalry game will be very telling about both teams. In my fantasy world, some NHL general manager would go and gather up all the Finns in the NHL; it would be very interesting to see how they’d fare there as well.

Switzerland 5, Norway 4 (OT)

For one afternoon, Vancouver turned into…Vikingstad! Didn’t see this one coming – much closer game than expected. I’m puzzled at the effort by a Swiss team that should advance to the quarters and give one of the contenders a decent challenge there. Hiller was supposed to be unstoppable, right? That was the high point for Norway; they’ll be out of their elimination game after one period.

Slovakia 6, Latvia 0

This is how you prove yourself to be a major contender, by laying the lumber to one of the weak sisters. Take note Canada, Sweden, Czech Republic. They’re still going to have a tough road in the elimination games, facing high seeds throughout. Having Russia lose to the Czechs would help a bit.

Belarus 5, Germany 3

Germany’s still got a way to go, to bring up the overall level of their program; here’s a lesson that dressing more NHL players isn’t a given for winning in this tournament. Germany might have had a chance in a secondary round matchup against Switzerland if they had defeated the White Russians; the lower seed ensures their elimination.

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 21st, 2010 at 10:10 am and is filed under New metrics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.