What is going on? The Canadian women’s hockey team has won their first two games handily beating Italy 16-0 and beating Russia 12-0. As I write, they are beating Sweden 8-1 midway through the 2nd period. This equates to a 36-1 ratio. Why do we care about the ratio? Well, if two teams of equal records should meet in the playoffs, the team with the higher differential will have ‘home ice’ advantage. The ‘home team’ has the advantage of making the last substitutions before face-offs. Very key for making sure you have the right matchups on the ice.Â
Therefore, it is in a team’s best interest to score as many goals as possible, and allow as few as possible against to ensure home ice advantage should any other team have the same record.Â
As it so happens, in women’s international hockey, there are only 2 teams that are of elite quality: Canada and USA. Each team is in opposite pools, so according to plan they will not meet until the gold medal game. Each team will not be defeated. Hence, differential is going to matter.Â
Unfortunately, all the other women’s teams are, sorry folks, pathetic. Italy can hardly skate, nor can Russia (oddly enough). Italy would not even have qualified if they weren’t the hosts. So yes, there are going to be blowouts.Â
The cruxt then is that Canada needs to ensure that they score more goals than the US. Vice-versa if you’re a Bushie. The format in place dictates that this has to happen if you consider yourself a competitor who is intent on winning the ultimate prize.
Canada, as the media puts it, “is running up the scores” against their opponents. For those of you who don’t know “running up the score” has a stigma attached to it. The term is used by the media to indicate that a team is disrespecting the other team by not letting up on the aggression and allowing the opponent to ‘save some face’. This usually applies to college football and basketball where the match-ups are often one-sided. You rarely see it in pro sports because there is parity in the league that prevents a run-up from occurring.  In either of those cases however, running up the score serves no purpose as differential is never used to determine any sort of tie-breaking situation. In addition, since pro teams play each other several times in a season (typically), there is an unwritten rule in place that you don’t run the score up on an opponent. There are going to be games where the opponent is having an ‘off’ day and the other team is firing on all cylinders. But in pro sports, the reverse could happen on any given day. So if you don’t want a team to embarrass you some day, you don’t do it to them either. Not to mention the bad press and the disdain of fans nationwide.
First of all, the ‘media’ in this case is mostly made up of US newspapers and broadcast stations. They’re take on the scores so far is to be expected since: a) the USA team is expected to play Canada in the gold medal game, b) team USA is not scoring as prolifically as Canada at this point in time and c) they’re Americans – expected behaviour.  Both teams are ‘running up the scores’ folks. They have to. The goals matter. Most of the free world understands this and is not giving it a second thought. Even the teams that Canada is whipping are not concerned. They are making comments like “we are honoured to be playing Canada” and “we’re learning so much from the experience”. They are expecting run-ups because Canada has to in order to top USA for home ice.
Both teams could ease off now that Canada has such a large margin. But that would be an insult to the other nation in my opinion.Â
I always thought that there’s nothing wrong with running up the score in ‘playoff’ or big-time situations. The only reason to ever lay-off is to reduce the chances of injury. I would condone this for Canada now that they’ve virtually sealed the differential. It would not be insulting to the opponent since the situation would be obvious.