Quote Originally Posted by nokids View Post
i totally agree with you sensfan. i dont care for these hockey olympics. canada winning the gold in hockey is as anticlimactic as watching the yankees win a world series. i read somewhere that canada's cap hit would be around $88 million if you added up the salaries of all their players. the US is half that, around $40 million. so it's already known that canada has the best talent. that being said, canada should be a little concerned that this is the best team they've ever had and the americans are hanging in with them. 2-2 now.
Not sure these numbers came from. On NHL NUMBERS ( http://www.nhlnumbers.com/ )the US Cap hit is $80M, Canada is $127M. A spread of $47M but only a 60% difference (127/80), not a 120% difference (88/40). For the top 5 players on each team, Canada`s cap hit is about 25% higher ($7.5M); for the top 10 players it is 40% higher ($20M). The differnce is depth. Canada`s depth is greater than any other team. This was especially noticeable with the Russians - after their top 6 or so forwards and maybe 4 D, the talent level drops off. They definitely have lines 1 through 4 whereas Canada`s was much closer to 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D. The same is also true of the D and goaltending (not many teams were 2 or 3 deep between the pipes as Canada was). Short tournaments are always difficult for Canadian teams to gell. If the games lasted 4 weeks instead of 2 weeks, the gap between Canada and the other teams would widen further. Then the games would be anticlimactic. As it stands, anything can happen in a short tournament and that is partly what makes these games so interesting.