Olympic women's hockey blowout question

[delalluvia]

I'm assuming that since they're wanting a 'mercy rule' for women's hockey, men's hockey used to have such a rule as well?

The argument is women's hockey is still young and thus suck-ass teams make it to the Olympics, so if a team is getting beat bad, a ref should call the game over.

I don't think this score is a 'blowout', but I don't know much about hockey.

The artcile mentions that Men's hockey was once young and blowouts also happened...did they call for a mercy rule then?

VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- The Canadian women's hockey team set an Olympic record on Saturday night, welcoming Slovakia to its first Winter Games tournament with an 18-0 demolition at Hockey Place. Before you shed a tear for the Slovaks, keep in mind they're the national that defeated Bulgaria by the score of 82-0 in an infamous game in 2008.

http://sports.yahoo.com/olympics/vancouver/blog/fourth_place_medal/post/Canada-sets-record-18-0-as-women-s-hockey-face?urn=oly,219527

[Sheriff Roland]

Mercy rules are for kids ... these are adults.

Whoever is suggesting this change in rules should find something a little more useful to do.

(89 to 0 blowout? I can't imagine such a thing happening. But if you want to play with the adults, you have to accepts the results.)

[Sheriff Roland]

http://www.ctvolympics.ca/hockey/news/newsid=40791.html#canada+sets+olympic+record+rout+slovakia

"We were trying to do our best, but it was impossible, they were moving so fast," forward Petra Pravlikova said. "We need to play a lot of these games [to improve]. We need to play like 50 of these games per year."

http://www.ctvolympics.ca/hockey/news/newsid=41049.html#slovaks+learn+hard+lesson+defeat+canada

"It was a great game and Canada is just a great hockey team,'' goalie Zuzana Tomcikova said after her ordeal by fire as Canada outshot the 11th-ranked Slovaks 67-9.

"I don't even know how many shots there were but ... it was a lot.

"Seeing so many shots from such great players helps every goalie so I hope I can forget about tonight and just take the experience and use it for my own benefit.''

... among the crowd of 16,496...

Defenceman Barbora Bremova, said through an interpreter she's used to playing in front of 40 people and maybe 10 of them would be family members.


I don't think it would be right for the Canadian to play less than their best at the Olympics ... especially in front of a 16,500 paying audience. Nor should the audience get less than the 60 minutes of regulation play - for their money.