It's a real shame, but anyone who isn't a shill for USA Hockey should've seen this coming. I said it the last few weeks, and some here didn't like it. Apparently we had to defend bad hockey players that had no business being anywhere near this team. And there were a lot of selfish fans of NHL teams that couldn't care less about if we had success in this tournament that came in this thread to tell us what was best for our World Junior team that they had no stake in. Complete selfishness. None of them seem to want to show their faces now.
USA Hockey selected a bad team. This coach needs to be canned immediately. He got too comfortable after the win last time with a great group of players. He was selecting his own player who had no business on the team. They were selecting undrafted guys over first round picks. They had an undrafted guy in the lineup over our highest pick in the 2023 draft for seniority reasons. Complete nonsense.
I said it from the beginning that this was not a strong group. What you don't do is compound the obvious reality of the team, and select the oldest possible team you can thinking you are going to overpower reality and make these mediocre 19 year olds into better players than the 19 year olds on the other top teams just because you want them to be. They weren't. Select the best prospects, and then supplement that with guys that can come back in future editions. We were supposed to be too good for using the same strategy that works for every country other than the one country that is demonstrably better than us. Except we weren't. Too much pride. Too arrogant.
The lack of a goalie who was at the level of goalies on the other top teams didn't help, but this team wasn't that good. You could see it in all the Prelim games. They played one team that could give them any sort of game, and that was probably also the weakest edition of that team we've seen in a long time. Outplaying a bad Sweden team didn't mean we were good this time around, and it wasn't like we decimated them. It was a one goal win. In the games against the bad teams they didn't put up any dominating totals either, shots or goals.
People got too excited about mediocre players dominating a bunch of sub-USHL level players from Latvia and Austria. We got what we deserved. Very unlikable team. Hopefully they learn their lesson, and select a young team for December. It's not going to be much better. The 2003's are not a strong age group either. We might not be Gold Medal Contenders in December either. But don't compound that mistake. Select a younger team. I hope a lot of people learn from this disaster of a team.
teamusa.usahockey.com
