Gearing Up for Sochi

Olympic hockey fascinates me.

The process of choosing the teams feels like a video game, and the hockey is amongst the best there is. Unfortunately, the 2014 Sochi Olympics won’t see the puck drop for roughly 2 years. Much remains to be decided, including whether or not the NHL will allow their players to participate (spoiler: they will).

First up, Puck Daddy brings us a listing of the 32 men’s teams attempting to qualify for the tournament.

According to IIHF regulations, the top 9 teams are guaranteed entry. As of now, that would be:

1. Russia
2. Finland
3. Sweden
4. Canada
5. Czech Republic
6. United States
7. Switzerland
8. Germany
9. Norway

3 more will be granted access. Likely candidates include Slovakia, Belarus, Latvia, Denmark, and Austria.

There are 2 questions that come to mind.

First, why do we need 12 teams? Why not have a different tournament structure and limit it to 6, 7, or 8 teams? Nobody is interested in seeing Finland play Denmark, nor does anyone give anyone outside the top 6 a realistic chance of being competitive. The whole tournament could be more exciting with more match-ups between the good teams.

More interestingly, how are these rankings calculated? Canada and Sweden have won each of the last 3 best-on-best international hockey tournaments (last 3 Olympics).

Here’s how the IIHF website breaks it down.

• The last 4 World Championships and last 1 Olympic Games are looked to for data.
• Each tournament awards points based on the order of finish, as follows:

1. 1,200
2. 1,160
3. 1,120
4. 1,100
5. 1,060
6. 1,040
7. 1,020
8. 1,000
9. 960
10. 940
11. 920
12. 900
13. 880
14. 860

• Further more, they use a sliding % as a smoothing factor over time. Those percentages look like this:
• Year 1 – 100%
• Year 2 – 75%
• Year 3 – 50%
• Year 4 – 25%
• Year 5 – 0%

So, it’s a pretty simple formula. Canada’s 2010 Olympic Gold medal is currently 900 points towards their total.

I guess it doesn’t really matter, since the rankings rarely ever matter. That said, it’s kind of ridiculous that the Olympics, the only best-on-best tournament in the world (these days) is given the same weighting as the World Championships, which are an afterthought for more of the top players.