U.S. thumps China 12-1 in women's hockey

Wow...did China send in their B-Team by mistake???

Nope, it's just the difference between US / Canada and the rest of the world's womens hockey teams is huge

They will get better over time though:) At least the Chinese team scored

Some of the other teams should just not be there, either cut this event completely from the games, or just cut it down to a 4 team comp. Unless a sport is played and competitive in about 10 countries - Im afraid it is not an Olympic sport. Baseball was cut from the summer games for the same reason, and it looks like ice hockey may be from the winter games.

BurakuminDes:

I totally agree with you. Women's hockey in these Olympics will come down to Canada vs. the U.S. in the finals. You can take that to the bank. In fact it will be like that in many Winter Olympics to come. I agree too that it should be cut. After all, baseball has interest in more countries than women's hockey, and yet it was cut from the Summer games. Heck, rugby union has been absent from the Olympics for some time now and it has more interest in the world than women's ice hockey.

Comparisons to baseball and rugby don't work, because we're talking about countries that have winter, a much smaller number (I doubt we'll ever see a hockey team from Latin America or Africa). Women's ice hockey is played in all of the European countries, as well as Canada and the US. Their programs simply aren't as well developed as those in Canada, the US, and Sweden (who beat the US in the round robin section of last year's world championships).

Turfing women's hockey out of the Olympics isn't the best way to encourage other countries to continue to develop their programs.

Parity will come - look at women's curling where the Chinese are already competitive.

Turfing women's hockey out of the Olympics isn't the best way to encourage other countries to continue to develop their programs.

Good point. The same could be said of baseball. A large number of countries play it, but many are not as developed as Cuba, the U.S., Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Dominican Republic, Canada, Australia, Mexico, or Venezuela. So I'm sure baseball will be back in the Olympics someday.

At least they held back on running up the score.

I realize you're being ironic, Nessie, but the goal differential is used when determining placings for the gold medal round, so there's a reason teams want to thrash their opponents as badly as possible.

Thanks, Aedfed; I figured it might be something like that.

When I was watching it was clear that USA would win. I believe China gain too any penalties early in the game. I stop watching after a certain point.