Posted on 02/28/2010 12:20:17 PM PST by LiberConservative
This is going to be a great match. USA! USA! USA!
One thing worth noting is that international hockey is played on a larger ice surface and has slightly different rules (the "no-touch" icing rule, for example).
An NHL rink is 85 feet wide, while Olympic hockey is played on a 30-meter wide rink (almost 100 feet). The length of the NHL and Olympic rinks are almost the same (about 200 feet), but the distance between the blue lines (the neutral zone) is about 8 feet longer in Olympic hockey than in the NHL.
The larger ice surface is one big reason why Olympic hockey can be so much more exciting . . . there's simply much more room for skating and passing under Olympic rules.
And I can't imagine playing 4-on-4 hockey in OT on that huge ice surface, either!
That was an NHL sized rink, wasn’t it? I thought it was the same ice that the Vancouver Canucks play on.
It’s the same arena where the Canucks play, but I thought the rink itself was modified to Olympic specs. If they played the hockey games on a North American surface, then that would explain why Canada and the U.S. met for the gold medal — and why other dominant international teams like Russia, Sweden and the Czech Republic didn’t even reach the semifinals.
That might explain part of it, but many players from those countries play or played in the NHL, so the rink size would not be so foreign as say 20 years ago.
On NBC they had an interview with Bettman between periods and he made an off-hand comment, something like “A great game being played with NHL players, NHL rules and on an NHL rink.” They might have modified it for international size, I am not sure. Obviously no-touch icing is not an NHL rule, but I forget, are pucks over the glass immediate penalties in most international tournaments? Also, don’t most international games play 5-on-5 for OT?
Don’t know if you’ve seen this yet -
“Hockey Night in America: Gold Medal Game Draws 17.6 Overnight
Hockey drew NFL-like ratings on NBC Sunday.
The Canada/USA Olympic Men’s Hockey Gold Medal game drew a 17.6 overnight rating on NBC Sunday afternoon, up 46% from the ‘02 Gold Medal game, which featured the same two teams.
Overnight ratings for the 2006 Gold Medal game were unavailable.
Sunday’s game is on pace to finish as the highest rated hockey telecast in the United States since 1980.
To put the numbers in perspective, Sunday’s game drew a higher overnight rating than every World Series game since 2004 (including every game of Yankees/Phillies last year), every NBA Finals telecast since 1998, and every NCAA Men’s Basketball Final Four game since at least ‘98.
Excluding the NFL, the 17.6 overnight for the game is the second-highest of the year for any sporting event, behind only the Texas/Alabama BCS National Championship Game in January (18.2).
(Sports Business Daily)http://sportsmediawatch.blogspot.com/2010/03/hockey-night-in-america-gold-medal-game.html
Another subtle difference is that even though NHL and IIHF rinks are nearly identical in length, I believe the size of the neutral zone is different. I think it's about 8 extra feet between the blue lines under international rules. And the goal lines are a bit further from the boards (13 feet vs. 11 feet) in international hockey, too.
International rules also have the old semi-circular goal crease instead of the crease with the edges clipped off that the NHL uses.
The more I think about it, the more I realize they must have played this tournament on an NHL-sized rink. There's no way they could have done all the work needed to convert it from one format to the other (and back again) in time for the Canucks to resume their season there.
Here's a great link to the differences in the rules. I think all of the IIHF rules -- with the exception of the rink size itself -- were used in the Olympics.
Thanks for the link, and congrats to Canada. You are right, first home team to win a Gold in men’s hockey since 1980 (and the US is the only other country to win gold at home). But to be fair, there have not been any Olympics held in strong hockey countries other than Canada and the US. Italy, France (lol), Norway, Japan, Austria ...
We’ll see in 2014 how Russia does. I was surprised they got steamrolled so easily, but I guess one off night is enough in a tournament like this.
That's a very good point. It's easy to get some of these sites mixed up because there have been a few Summer Olympics held in cities that are probably quite capable of hosting the Winter games (Stockholm, Helsinki, Munich, and Montreal come to mind).
A quick review of the past Olympic sites revealed some interesting tidbits. It looks like 1936 (Berlin and Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Germany) was the only time the Winter and Summer Olympics were hosted by the same country. Also, Denver was originally selected to host the 1976 Winter Olympics, but the voters of Colorado rejected a bond referendum to pay for the necessary infrastructure improvements -- so the IOC decided to hold them in Innsbruck, Austria because most of the venues from the 1964 Olympics were still in place.
"» A satellite phenomenon known in the industry as a "sun outage" is expected to briefly affect FSN Pittsburgh's broadcast of the game Saturday. The sun's alignment in relation to the satellite is likely to cause an outage starting at 1:19 p.m. This will disable FSN Pittsburgh's signal for between 2-4 minutes. "Sun outages" affect FSN Pittsburgh's broadcast signal twice a year between October and November and during March. They are not preventable.
Thanks for the heads up...we have the game dvrd. Tomorrow, hubby and sons get to to the Boston game (Christmas present finally being enjoyed).
The Olympic break did the Guins good :)
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