Hockey World Cup Tournament...

It's about time I start a thread on this ;)

Starting August 30th, it might be the last NHL calibre hockey for a while.

So there are 8 teams in this world cup: Canada, USA, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden, Finland and Russia.

There will be games in North America, Sweden, Finland, Czech Republic and Germany.

I think this will be quite fun to watch, because this tournament uses the NHL rules (so canadian rules!), not the weird international rules...

Who will win? I'll bet 2$ on Canada, but if the Russians would love to play well, they can easily win this...

However our first line of Mario Lemieux / Martin St-Louis / Brad Richards is getting interesting ;)

And how about our goaltenders ;) Brodeur, Luongo and Theodore? can't be better!

See you there ;)

Seems nobody care, but ;)

| European Pool | | --- |

| | GP | W | L | T | OTL | PTS | GF | GA |

| x-FINLAND | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 11 | 4 |

| y-SWEDEN | 3 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 5 | 13 | 9 |

| CZECH REPUBLIC | 3 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 10 | 10 |

| GERMANY | 3 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 15 |

x - Clinched 1st place in European pool and will play Germany in the Quarterfinals. y - Clinched 2nd place in European pool and will play Czech Republic in the Quarterfinals.

| North American Pool | | --- |

| | GP | W | L | T | OTL | PTS | GF | GA |

| x-CANADA | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 6 | 10 | 3 |

| y-RUSSIA | 3 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 9 | 6 |

| UNITED STATES | 3 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 5 | 6 |

| SLOVAKIA | 3 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 13 |

x - Clinched 1st place in North American pool and will play Slovakia in the Quarterfinals. y - Clinched 2nd place in North American pool and will play United States in the Quarterfinals.

One day I'll have to fix that bug...

Originally posted by Tristan I would have paid more attention if the NHL was not bound to strike; if the players don't start realizing that hockey is in major financial trouble, then the NHL will be done soon.

Well, I must agree with the players on that one, it's not their fault if the owners are stupid enough to pay them those salaries...

However, for the benifit of the game, I think all teams should be allowed to work with the same budget, so talent search would be the real way to build a team.

We had proofs that money doesn't make a team win a cup this year... Tampa and Calgary being 2 low budget (for the moment) teams.

In fact, the problem is not paying Joe Sakic 10M$/year, it's paying Bobby Holik the same... Fans are paying to see superstars, not utility players.. plus, I don't even go to the games, it's too expensive, and I consider myself above average salary wise, so who the hell can buy tickets for those games beside corporations ?!?!?!

US is now out.. thanks to our beloved captain Saku Koivu ;)

Now, Canada vs Czech Republic, that might be interesting... if the Czech play like they can, this will be interesting to watch...

2 hockey games left for 2004! so watch them!