WJC: 2020 Team USA Roster Talk

[Leviathan899]

Turcotte always goes to the dirty areas. That’s an odd criticism. That’s not Caufield’s game. I wouldn’t expect him to go to dirty areas. Puck luck, PDO, SH%, on ice SH%, on ice SV%. These are all real things that we don’t have stats for in a junior tournament, but I think I understand them well enough and these are factors at play in the statistics of some players from our games that I think it’s worth mentioning.

In a SSS tournament, you go with your best players, in my opinion. Make a list of your best players, and try to divide ice time like that. Pinto is no better than our 7th best forward, in my opinion. Depending on the day, I might say 9th best. I think it’s close between him, Drury and Brink. This coach seems to agree with you though, so we’ll see who ends up being right. For the sake of the team, I hope it’s not me.

Yeah but your ability to see the game and rank players leaves much to be desired.

 

[Leviathan899]

Beecher drove the net several times this game.
Get lost with your garbage takes.

I hate to be mean but hands down the worst poster on this board. Doesn’t get the game. Keeps parroting that Caufield and turcotte should have been gifted more ice, because they had high point totals with the NTDP, but those players never deserved more ice time than what they received. That Tik Tok video of Turcotte, Caufield, Zegras and Beecher was also indicative of how immature these kids really are.

 

[jj cale]

Yeah but your ability to see the game and rank players leaves much to be desired.

I would disagree,PB knows the game well. His opinions are sometimes controversial (and sometimes they are because he says things people don't want to hear) but he does know the game. I don't always agree what his take myself but to say he doesn't know the game would be wrong IMO.

 

[NUhockey]

I hate to be mean but hands down the worst poster on this board. Doesn’t get the game. Keeps parroting that Caufield and turcotte should have been gifted more ice, because they had high point totals with the NTDP, but those players never deserved more ice time than what they received. That Tik Tok video of Turcotte, Caufield, Zegras and Beecher was also indicative of how immature these kids really are.

Completely agree, unacceptable for 18 year old kids to have some safe fun and show personality. If I was coaching those kids I would've thrown them off the f***ing team immediately.

 

[Chazz Reinhold]

Beecher had the #1 5/5 D zone exit % and 3rd best
O zone entrance %. So spare me this non-existent
O capabilites. He set up one of the best 1st period
US chances with a controlled entrance and nice pass to
the RW which the Fin goalie made a good right pad save on. Beecher drove wide in the 3rd period and had a
close in opportunity on it.

No one on Team USA forward core had a strong game
today. Best forwards in my viewing today were
Brink and Zegras.

How about lots of credit to Finland? Saw them play what
maybe game of their lives. They are the defending
Gold Medalist for a reason.

Cherry picking two discrete stats without any other context to try and prove that Beecher was somehow good offensively is actually hilarious. Touché.

 

[KillerMillerTime]

What if they're 19? 24? Is there a particular defining age at which I can receive your unqualified permission to be critical of players?

Oh please, anyone that talks like you do about
kids 7 months out of HS need to grow up.

 

[Chazz Reinhold]

Oh please, anyone that talks like you do about
kids 7 months out of HS need to grow up.

If I understand your position correctly, I’m a loser and need to grow up because I said particular players didn’t have offensive capabilities relative to the roles they’re in, I used the term “grinders” to describe a couple of them, and used the term “scrubs” relative to other more skilled teammates? This is what has caused you to get red in the face and angrily pound your keyboard at me?

 

[KillerMillerTime]

Cherry picking two discrete stats without any other context to try and prove that Beecher was somehow good offensively is actually hilarious. Touché.

Keep making crap up. Never once said he was good.
He made several ill advised passes in the O zone
and the hit today was terrible.

My responses were due to blaming him for Turcotte
and Caulfield's struggles and statements saying he did
"nothing" offensively. I watched every US game
in its entirety and those aren't "cherry picked"
stats. I saw him make coast-to-coast rushes against
Canada, CR and Finland that resulted in
two clear HDSC and one where he lost control of the
puck cutting to the net after beating 3 Canadian players
on literally an end to end rush. Thats in addition to the chance he set up against Finland in period one.
So, I give you specific plays that are part of those
"cherry picked" stats and all you give me was garbage.
So it was time to take out your trash views.

 

[KillerMillerTime]

If I understand your position correctly, I’m a loser and need to grow up because I said particular players didn’t have offensive capabilities relative to the roles they’re in, I used the term “grinders” to describe a couple of them, and used the term “scrubs” relative to other more skilled teammates? This is what has caused you to get red in the face and angrily pound your keyboard at me?

You denigrate these 18 year olds behind a made up name on a hockey board, so the shoe fits you nicely.

 

[Chazz Reinhold]

You denigrate these 18 year olds behind a made up name on a hockey board, so the shoe fits you nicely.

Actually, Chazz Reinhold is a real person. He's a brave and decent man. So goes to show how much you know.

Also, you still have not clearly explained why you have chosen me--of all people in the various threads about the US WJC team who have been much more critical and disparaging of players than me--to "denigrate" for using relatively mild terms such as "grinders" to describe players miscast in roles.

If you'd taken a second to process my critiques instead of being a faux tough guy asking me who the "phuc" I am to "crap" on "18 years old [???]," you'd realize my critiques were aimed at Sandelin (who is not an "18 years old") for relying heavily on players in roles they weren't suited for, and for distributing ice time in an inefficient manner. But you (i.e., someone who is "behind a made up name on a hockey board" who does not know whether he or she is "denigrating" an 18-year-old, 37-year-old, or 56-year-old) instead decided to get mad and make no coherent point whatsoever.

 

[ALF AmericanLionsFan]

I hate to be mean but hands down the worst poster on this board. Doesn’t get the game. Keeps parroting that Caufield and turcotte should have been gifted more ice, because they had high point totals with the NTDP, but those players never deserved more ice time than what they received. That Tik Tok video of Turcotte, Caufield, Zegras and Beecher was also indicative of how immature these kids really are.

what was the Tik Tok video?

 

[Czechboy]

Just my 2 cents...

States have 4 medals (1 gold) in last 5 years which is tremendous
This team is stacked with future NHL stars and the US program is working tremendously well
Your coach seemed to favour one style of player over another which seemed odd to me
The fact he is a NCAA coach should be more to his credit than detriment.. NCAA is a massive NHL feeder league:
In The NHL - College Hockey, Inc. (note, the article is written by the NCAA so might be a bit biased)
Your main reason for not being in a semi is that you had the misfortune of facing another Top 5 team. If you had gotten Czechs/Swiss/Slovakia then you'd be gearing up for a gold medal run this morning. Unfortunately, 2 of the Big 5 always meet in a quarter and one goes home.

 

[kabidjan18]

What's funny is that I tried to be very diplomatic on this topic of how the coach deployed players prior to our loss. I had a feeling it wouldn't work, but I was willing for the sake of being respectful to take most of these opinions defending this deployment of players as valid with merits that I happen to disagree with. But since we got eliminated in the QF, we can now say pretty clearly that the coach's favorite grinders like Drury, Beecher, Ford, even Pinto, played too much and didn't get the job done. Our high skill early picks barely played. It's a risky strategy to not play your high picks, and to instead give their minutes to players that nearly anyone would admit are vastly inferior. If it doesn't work out, I don't know how you don't get significant blame.

If you get offended because your team drafted one of those grinders, that's too bad. Everyone who watched this team could tell Beecher contributed nearly nothing. We aren't haters because we admit one of the players on the team didn't deserve to play in the role he was put in.

This is just wrong though. Beecher didn't dump the puck behind the net, he would try to take the edge with speed. Sometimes effectively sometimes ineffectively. But he wasn't dumping the puck behind the net, I think that's a bit revisionist with the history there. His zone entries were actually not bad, his passing to follow that up usually wasn't great and he also struggled with puck protection, but I think you might be mis-diagnosing the problem.

 

[KillerMillerTime]

Actually, Chazz Reinhold is a real person. He's a brave and decent man. So goes to show how much you know.

Also, you still have not clearly explained why you have chosen me--of all people in the various threads about the US WJC team who have been much more critical and disparaging of players than me--to "denigrate" for using relatively mild terms such as "grinders" to describe players miscast in roles.

If you'd taken a second to process my critiques instead of being a faux tough guy asking me who the "phuc" I am to "crap" on "18 years old [???]," you'd realize my critiques were aimed at Sandelin (who is not an "18 years old") for relying heavily on players in roles they weren't suited for, and for distributing ice time in an inefficient manner. But you (i.e., someone who is "behind a made up name on a hockey board" who does not know whether he or she is "denigrating" an 18-year-old, 37-year-old, or 56-year-old) instead decided to get mad and make no coherent point whatsoever.

Fake name, dumps on 18 yr olds playing at elite level
in their sport. Gets called out for asshattery then complains. Do us a favor and change your name
to Chazz Whinehold, fits better, but you could truncate
your first name and it would fit perfectly.

I gave you specific examples of the supposed "cherry picked" stats but you just want to whine about being called out. Lot of people here are baby soft when challenged.

 

[Chazz Reinhold]

This is just wrong though. Beecher didn't dump the puck behind the net, he would try to take the edge with speed. Sometimes effectively sometimes ineffectively. But he wasn't dumping the puck behind the net, I think that's a bit revisionist with the history there. His zone entries were actually not bad, his passing to follow that up usually wasn't great and he also struggled with puck protection, but I think you might be mis-diagnosing the problem.

A friend of mine described Beecher's game as resembling Lucic, which I think is a pretty fair comparison based on his physicality and north-south game. He certainly had a number of zone entries where he carried the puck wide with speed. I didn't see much skill out of Beecher other than his north-south speed, however, and it was clear this style was not fitting with Turcotte and Caufield.

Something along the lines of Beecher-Drury-Brink would have been a hell of a third line on the team based on the simple hockey supplied by Beecher and Drury, with the skill and hustle of Brink added in to allow them to hopefully be a net positive. It was never even tried, though, despite the fact that Beecher-Turcotte-Caufield looked ineffective pretty much the entire time they were on the ice together.

 

[Chazz Reinhold]

Fake name, dumps on 18 yr olds playing at elite level
in their sport. Gets called out for asshattery then complains. Do us a favor and change your name
to Chazz Whinehold, fits better, but you could truncate
your first name and it would fit perfectly.

I gave you specific examples of the supposed "cherry picked" stats but you just want to whine about being called out. Lot of people here are baby soft when challenged.

You are a strange, angry, and incoherent person. It's pretty clear you can't have a productive conversation.

 

[SpartanProdigy]

Just my 2 cents...

States have 4 medals (1 gold) in last 5 years which is tremendous
This team is stacked with future NHL stars and the US program is working tremendously well
Your coach seemed to favour one style of player over another which seemed odd to me
The fact he is a NCAA coach should be more to his credit than detriment.. NCAA is a massive NHL feeder league:
In The NHL - College Hockey, Inc. (note, the article is written by the NCAA so might be a bit biased)
Your main reason for not being in a semi is that you had the misfortune of facing another Top 5 team. If you had gotten Czechs/Swiss/Slovakia then you'd be gearing up for a gold medal run this morning. Unfortunately, 2 of the Big 5 always meet in a quarter and one goes home.

Appreciate the sentiment, but still a tough pill to swallow when a team with this much future NHL talent loses to a big 5 team who lost twice in group play including once to Switzerland (and it wasn't close) and get shut out by a goalie who let in one out of every five shots taken by the Swiss. Makes you wonder how hard Finland was really trying to win the Swiss game, they probably preferred the US over Russia. Sucks to have drawn Finland for QFs after placing 2nd in the group.

 

[Czechboy]

Appreciate the sentiment, but still a tough pill to swallow when a team with this much future NHL talent loses to a big 5 team who lost twice in group play including once to Switzerland (and it wasn't close) and get shut out by a goalie who let in one out of every five shots taken by the Swiss. Makes you wonder how hard Finland was really trying to win the Swiss game, they probably preferred the US over Russia. Sucks to have drawn Finland for QFs after placing 2nd in the group.

Yup... you do everything right and finish 2nd. The reward was supposed to be Swiss/Slovakia. The Swiss win was the only upset in that pool in a week of hockey.

Still, I'd rather lose and know my country has 10 NHLer's on the way.

 

[KillerMillerTime]

You are a strange, angry, and incoherent person. It's pretty clear you can't have a productive conversation.

Lol, you have rabbit ears also.

 

[SpartanProdigy]

Coaching was atrocious. Surprised Wahlstrom wasn't demoted to the 3rd line after the first game and definitely by the last game. Don't think he did one thing that actually helped the team win and took stupid penalties to hurt the team. As did Beecher, as did Drury. Zegras did as well but he also was the primary reason why the US scored half their goals in the tournament.

Clearly the coach had the idea in his head that he was going to ride his 19yos from beginning to end, regardless of talent or results and it backfired spectacularly. I don't buy this idea that Caufield and Turcotte to some extent, were unsuccessful because of the increased level of play. Caufield scored 14 goals (!) in the U18 tournament last year and honestly this is a lot of the same competition that he played against at the U18s. He also played well at the U18 tournament the year before against the 00's. 7 players on this Finnish team were 01s or later and were leaders on the Finnish U18 team that the US destroyed in May. The real difference was last year Caufield was playing with Hughes and Zegras, two elite playmakers that could not fit better with him stylistically (even better than Turcotte) and this year he had no elite playmaker setting him up. Instead, our one elite playmaker started the tournament wasting on the 4th line and then spent the rest of the tournament attempting to set up Jack Drury. How Zegras wasn't flanked by Kaliyev and Caufield or Robertson at all times is just disgusting. If Zegras can setup guys like Hall and Drury for goals, imagine what he could do surrounded by elite finishers.

And to clarify something, I know Caufield didn't look great in this tournment but that seemed to be a result of being placed in a role that is not his strength. Caufield's strength has never been transition, puck possession, passing, etc. He has even acknowledged that he tries to hold the puck as little as possible. His strength is disappearing in the O-zone and suddenly reappearing open for an NHL-caliber one-timer. What this means is that for him to be most successful he needs a cerebral puck possession center who has vision and the ability to play east/west. That's literally what Zegras does, has the ability to slow down play similar to Kane and anticipate the play. And it's pretty much the complete opposite of what Beecher does. Again, not disparaging Beecher but he might be the actual worst player to play on Caufield's line. There's a reason why they played on the same team for 2 years and never played on the same line. Beecher has a lot of skills in his own right - he's a very physical and speedy player north to south. Excels at entries. Beyond that his offensive skills are limited. His vision and IQ are not playmaker-esque. When he does gain entry he tends to drive to the net full speed or skate around the net and then pass too late (as Wahlstrom did all tournament) instead of reading the play forming in the zone and creating a real danger chance. Certainly not a player that Caufield will excel with.

 

[kabidjan18]

I don't disagree that there probably were better line combinations to be had than Beecher with those two. What I've taken exception to though was the statement that "He was as useless as anyone. He'd throw the puck around the boards once he entered the offensive zone."

That is just factually inaccurate. And I think it's a poor retelling of history. I became "that guy." I just rewatched the game, and I timestamped every one of Beecher's shifts.
2020 IIHF World Junior Championship | QUARTERFINAL 3 | USA vs Finland | Full Game - YouTube
Here are the timestamps for all of Beecher's shifts (also found in the comments section). I'm completely open to being checked for shifts I may have missed.

Never once did he throw the puck behind the net. Never once. So this retelling of the game where Beecher just relentlessly dumped the puck in behind the net. It's just a false piece of information. I don't know what else to say about it. It's trying to paint Beecher as a player he is not with faults he does not have.
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[kabidjan18]

A friend of mine described Beecher's game as resembling Lucic, which I think is a pretty fair comparison based on his physicality and north-south game. He certainly had a number of zone entries where he carried the puck wide with speed. I didn't see much skill out of Beecher other than his north-south speed, however, and it was clear this style was not fitting with Turcotte and Caufield.

Something along the lines of Beecher-Drury-Brink would have been a hell of a third line on the team based on the simple hockey supplied by Beecher and Drury, with the skill and hustle of Brink added in to allow them to hopefully be a net positive. It was never even tried, though, despite the fact that Beecher-Turcotte-Caufield looked ineffective pretty much the entire time they were on the ice together.

Sure! I agree with assessment to some extent. Though, rewatching the game, I think my biggest complaint with Beecher is actually that he is too lazy. He doesn't apply the same effort on the forecheck, he kinda saunters around. He can be physical, and he was excessively for one play, but I think he really slacked off in that regard in this game and even I'd say in this tournament, and you'd see Caufield and Turcotte launching themselves up the ice after the puck and then here comes Beecher later at 60% speed too late to get to the puck or get to the puck first.

He also tried a couple centering attempts without adequately scouting out the target area. Made a lot of simple zone entry passes, and those were good too, but not a player with a lot of deceptive movement, not an incredible visionary, relies mostly on his speed and outlet passes. Not necessarily a bad thing, but together with the lazy forechecking and not winning pucks along the boards, just didn't bring enough to his linemates for the line to make sense. Beecher is good at zone entries, but so are Turcotte and Caufield, there's a bit of a redundancy there. However, a "grinder" he is not. "Scrub" is more accurate.

 

[Star Ocean]

Wahlstrom feels like a player who will never be a regular NHL player. Fringe.

 

[SpartanProdigy]

Wahlstrom feels like a player who will never be a regular NHL player. Fringe.

Certainly not if he plays like he did in this tournament. Did not deserve to wear the A at this tournament, really think Robertson out of anyone should have worn it.

 

[Joe Zanussi]

Really disappointing result obviously. One positive was that I thought Knight was excellent yesterday. Just too many giveaways thru the middle to ever get anything going.

In other news, everybody is certainly entitled to post whatever they want on a public board like this.....but I thought this thread was really tough to navigate with all the bitching and moaning at each other....maybe it’s like that every year and I’m just getting older, but it seemed unreadable at times. Just one guy’s opinion.