Trivia verification word: guesswork


IIHF Analysis
Well, realistically, Finland are hardly in a position to do WORSE than we performed in the last WJC tournament: two wins, both against another bottom-feeding team in the British Isles, is a rough record but at least one that means there's nowhere to go but up, in theory. What's more worrying is that even with that squad's well below average performance, two of the team's top four scorers aren't returning - both William Tree and Adelbert Steiner have aged out of Juniors participation, and it's hard to see where the points are going to come from to replace them. There's going to be some pressure on the new faces in the squad to do just that, particularly loanee Rodrigo Banes - he did a lot of work to justify being picked highly in the S73 SMJHL draft by Kelowna, but one wonders if he's ready to shoulder this much of the burden. (accidentally bang on 150 words)

Teammates is Teammates
The Falcons class of '73 is going to have a decent amount of representation at the Juniors, that's for sure, but skating in the blue and white? It's just Simo. But this raises an interesting question - while it's never a bad thing to have good chemistry with a teammate, is it not perhaps preferable to shake things up and ensure players experience playing with a wider array of teammates than a domestic squad can provide? In much the same way that a person is said to be an average of the half dozen people they spend the most time with, a player will naturally pick up elements of the game from the players they spend the most time alongside - in this respect, perhaps being alone on an international team makes it more likely that Simo learns unusual tricks from folks he'd otherwise spend no time on the ice with at all. (151 words)