sibiriak

If I were the Russians coach, Radulov sits next game, or at best plays on the 4th line. It's not like he's been effective anyway. Overall, good game for both teams, Good Luck to USA, we (Russia) can use some more practice in Q-round

So far both look good. Nichushkin needs to be moved up to one of the top lines, since Kovy-Datsyk-Radulov is obviously not working out.

So if the wings happened to have 2 days off before the Olympic break started for the rest of the NHL, you'd say that the break was 19 days? Get real. The length of the Olympic break is from the day after the last NHL game is played to the day before the next NHL game is played. We were talking about the break for the whole league. The IOC itself does not pay for the insurance. the individual national hockey hockey federations do. http://www.cbc.ca/sports/hockey/nhl/nhlers-won-t-skate-at-olympic-orientation-camp-1.1351047 "But the price tag to insure players against injury is too high for Hockey Canada, so the four-day camp starting Sunday in Calgary will consist of informational meetings about the Games in Sochi, Russia, and fostering team chemistry off the ice." Also, not all participating countries bring an equal amounts of NHL salaries to insure. So, even if the money is passing through IOC, each national federation pays according to the cost of its players' insurance.

Well, let's see. 1. IOC does not insure anybody. The national hockey federations (like USA Hockey) do. They have done so in the past and there's no reason to doubt that they will pay if liable. The contracts are insured with he same pool of insurance companies that the NHL uses, so I don't see why it would make any difference to those insurance companies, whether they pay the same amount of money to the Red Wings on the policy taken by the Wings themselves, or by the Swedish Hockey Federation. 2. I don't know about "US Math" but in normal math, here's how it works: The last 2 All-Star breaks were 5 days each. The Olympic break this year consists of: Feb. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24. That's 16 days by my count (not 17). So the difference is 16 - 5 = 11 days. OK it's 11 days and not 9 days over almost 200 days season (Pre-season NHL games started Sept. 14, Playoffs will go till about the end of May). Such a biiig difference.

Boy, one has to try hard to be wrong on every single point one made. 1. Players get paid X dollars per year, to be available to play 82 games + playoffs. They are, with or without the Olympics So "your 10 best employees" are NOT paid by the Wings while they play in the Olympics. 2. Their NHL salaries are INSURED for injury by their national hockey federations. So the Wings are NOT on the hook for Zetterberg's salary from now until he comes back from injury. 3. The Olympic break is 9 days longer than the normal All-Star break. Just 9 days over a 160 days season. So your analogy does not fly. Sorry.

Don't know how trustworthy that site is. They have Visnovsky as playing for Slovakia, but didn't he withdraw? Also, IIRC, each team can dress 20 skaters for each game, 4 full lines, not 4 F lines, 3 D pairs.

Every national hockey federation, that has NHLers playing for them in the Olympics, has to take out insurance that would pay the players' NHL salaries in case of an injury. Their NHL teams are not liable for that. They will lose the services of the player, but they would not have to pay him any money. In general, I understand why the owners have no interest in the Olympics. From their standpoint, whatever growth in popularity hockey experiences does not translate into any direct revenue for them. They risk losing some of their stars to injury, thereby reducing their teams chances of winning NHL games. The team that doesn't win enough suffers at the box office. So it's all risk for no reward for them. You'll notice, that often the NHL brass' bitching about Olympic participation is accompanied by suggestions that World Cup of hockey should be revived. Now the only difference between the Olympics and the WC of hockey is that the latter is run by the NHL, who gets to keep the profits (and is played in the summer so is less inconvenient from scheduling standpoint). The injury risk in WCH is the same or greater, since it's the offseason. Yet the NHL owners have no problem with an international best-of-the-best competition, as long as they keep the money. So maybe Bettman is trying to shake down the International Olympic Committee, to get some profit sharing with the NHL in the next Olympics?

That was because North American "professionals" were not allowed to play in the Olympics before 1998. So they wouldn't have been allowed to play even if they broke their contracts. It's a whole new game after 1998. I think you are right. This is Bettman starting his next CBA "negotiations" early. They (the owners) have done used the Olympic participation as a bargaining chip every time since 1998.

Canada may win the gold again, but it ain't gonna be easy

Let's recostruct the sequence of events according to Ms StClair. 1. Water was turned off during he night in her hotel room. She doesn't mention anything about water quality at this point, so it must have been OK before. 2. She calls down to the desk and someone says to her that the water will be turned on, but not to put her face to it because water containes "something dangerous". 3. Water is turned back on but comes out yellow. If one is to believe the hotel clerk's assertion, sometime during the night, perfectly good water turned dangerous. OK, so what might have happened, realistically? Version 1. Pipes were repaired and some dirt/rust got in them, Will flush in a few minutes and is not dangerous. Version 2. Pipes broke and raw sewage got in them. That is unsanitary, but chlorinated or fluoride treated water will remove the contamination in a matter of an hour or two, prompting the clerk to warn the guest, in his probably imperfect English, to not put her face in water. He probably meant for an hour or two, but didn't convey his meaning well. BTW, why "touch face to water" is not safe, but washing hands is apparently OK? Version 3. Some kind of industrial accident contaminated the water beyond the water treatment system's capacity, making water permanently unsafe. If that were the case, don't you think we'd see more about that than 1 reporter's complaint? I tried to find other accounts of unsafe/dirty water in Sochi and failed. All I see in all reports are the same 2 glasses of yellowish water on the same table. From the 3 possibilities, I'd think 1 or at worst 2 as likely, and the 3rd as totally improbable..

That is God's own truth.

Say that with a smile, and I'd pay attention.

No, that's gonna sting. What you do is dilute gin with tap water 1 to 4, then it is safe to bathe or drink. Yeah, the lesson being that the next host city better build and fully furnish 5-star hotels for the international press, before they even lay the first stone into the ice rink foundation.

I only have 1 data point about the water situation. The same pic with yellow water in two glasses. I have no idea how widespread it is. When I lived in Russia (nowhere near Sochi), sometimes we would get rusty colored water from the pipes, after the pipes were shutdown for maintenance/repair. After we let it run for 5 min, the water would be fine. I would think the same thing could happen in a brand new hotel building. However I don't know enough to say one way or the other. As an aside, in Kirtland, eastern suburb of Cleveland, the water is yelowish and full of iron, but safe to drink. Could be something like that in Sochi too. But again, I would need more data.

They should be so lucky. That's the Russian curling team captain.

I was born in the USSR but I lived in Memphis for a few years. Hence, y'all. And White is a "little kitten". Plus that course is apparently going to be redone to make it softer. And I don't think the NPR correspondent is an idiot. His main point was, that the construction was prioritized: Sports venues first, athlete accomodations second (and he does say that all the athletes are happy with those) and the hotels for the press - last. Which is very much the mindset of the Russian government. They have never been what you'd call PR savvy. It was my thought even before I heard this story, that the press got there early, and had nothing better to do than file horror stories which, in the big picture, don't matter very much.

http://hereandnow.wbur.org/ at about 3:14 mark NPR correspondent in Sochi provides a nice perspective on all the media reports of problems. Unless y'all think that NPR are also apologists for Russian Gov't

Not sure what the first link refers to. The second is more relevant. My question is, how much different are Sochi problems from what has gone before? IOC says 97% complete, even when corrected for their pro-Games bias, that means that fairly high proportion of work is done. I shall wait and see if those problems are indeed really bad and unusual, or are they just small details that will be fixed promptly. So we'll see what athletes and fans say when the Games begin. How am I comparing apples to oranges? Example please.

http://www.ctvnews.ca/sochi/sochi-on-a-shoestring-canada-s-hockey-teams-to-bunk-in-basic-dorm-style-rooms-1.1670363 Are those guys apologists too? Seriously, I know there are many unfinished things in Sochi. What I object to is that the media over here seems to portray Sochi's shortcomings like they are something special, that wasn't present to a lesser or greater degree at all the Olympics in recent memory. I can't help wondering, what those same people would have wrote if the same exact things were going on in an American Olympic host city.

The last thing the guy in your link says "got accosted by a 3 legged dog" That is why they are trying to get rid of the stray dogs. Not a nice thing to do, but what's the alternative? Russia is not a rich country that can afford to house thousands of stray dogs in a humane shelter somewhere. I seriously doubt they exist anywhere outside Moscow and Sankt Peterburg. What else would you do in their place? You are saying that you looked at the pix of rooms in my links? Can you tell me how they are different from the room in the Lysenkov video?

http://www.torontosun.com/2014/02/04/nhl-players-trade-luxury-for-community-in-sochi Here's Toronto Sun take. Are they Baghdad Bobs too?

Please look at the pix at the links in my post, and tell me if there's any difference between rooms in London, Vancouver, Beijing, and Sochi? The 3 bed room is not a typical room. See the video by Lysenkov that someone posted in this thread. That's what the rooms look like. Spartan, but not much different from earlier Olympics.

That's what I said when I first heard about their bid. The stated purpose of the Russian Government at the time was that after the Games were over, Sochi would be left with first class tourism infrastructure, that would enable it to reclaim its former Soviet prominence as a major resort for the Russian people. You can take this with as much salt as you wish.

(The temps in Sochi are in the 80s. Noone will be sleeping in the cold).OOps that was last week. It's down to the 40s now. Still, the heat will be fixed, the shower curtains hanged and the nitpicking foreign press mollified. No worries.

The water was yellow in one instance that we saw. If you ever moved in a brand new building, there is always dirt in he pipes. It flashes out in a few hours. Worrying about terrorist attacks? By your logic the Boston Bruins should refuse to ever play at home . Unlike the US, Russia had never had a terrorist attack at a sporting event. Newsflash: terrorism is a global threat. If we go by the historical number of victims, the USA would be in the top 4 right after Iraq, Afganistan, and Syria. Yet the NHL thinks nothing of holding games here. Quality of life? For the athletes it will be the same as in any Olympics before. The income level/standard of living of the Russian citizens of Sochi will not matter to the athletes at all. The environment around the Olympic events will be fine, the same as anywhere else. Safety? That's a new one. Even in this nitpicking thread I haven't seen any complaints about safety or crime in Sochi.