Will have to see whether last night was an aberration or not. Before about half way through that game Canada had been dominating on faceoffs all tournament. But a flip switched in the 2nd and Wright could not win a draw to save his life. I doubt Beck will be seeing any significant ice time the rest of the way barring injury.
One thing that would make sense would be to throw Beck in there sometimes just to take the draw, and have him change right afterwards (assuming he wins it).
I am actually quite impressed with Wright's playmaking skills. He feels like a guy that you build chemistry with over the course of 20 or 30 games and then all the sudden you know how to read off each other. Like you said, it's not the elite vision of the really high end guys like Crosby or Kane.
LOL! Good for you. my friend, I'm glad you had a great time - and WE won.
Bedard took off when he was paired with Stankoven. They IMMEDIATELY started to look dangerous at even strength. As a shooter, Bedard still needs someone to feed him and that's neither Guenther or Othmann.
Amen to that. They should be ashamed how reliant they've been on the youngest member of their squad.
I think the problem is some fans want to continue to judge Wright's performance on what they think he was supposed to be when he was hyped up as the can't miss #1 pick, and not whether or not he's performing fine at what he does.
This is what Canada and the USA almost always do at the WJCs. They always galaxy-brain themselves into bringing worse players because they need "role players" in the bottom-six.
I get the logic of bringing perhaps 1 line of defensive minded forwards that can still produce offensively (think of L’heureux, Gaucher, Savoie), but bringing a clear bottom 6 to play checking roles is outdated in my opinion. And when the bottom 6 brought to play physical doesn’t play physical, we see results like the czech game
You also run the risk of getting into a situation like the Slovakia game, where you drastically have the run of play but can't finish because 3/4 of your lineup are grinders.
Wright has been fine to good outside of the Slovakia game. If people are expecting a star performance from phenom Shane Wright then they are bound to be disappointed. If they are expecting a solid performance from an 18 year old #4 pick on the second line then he's been adequate. You'd still like to see more offence going forward.
We’re the same team that beat Sweden 5-1!LOL! Good for you. my friend, I'm glad you had a great time - and WE won.
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Too many Canadian fans are down because we barely beat Slovakia. Posters need to remember that Slovakia smoked the U.S. - so they were no joke.
While true, you could say that for about 95% of the roster.
You could say that with a couple of bounces Wright's offence looks good on paper, and that is true, but I don't think that anyone is going to be waxing about the coaching masterclass of the 2023 Canadian WJC team. A lot of the time this team is scrambling on defence and outside of the powerplay, admittedly quite a strong powerplay, you're not often that impressed with what they do offensively. Wright's line lacks a dynamic quality and that has been the case for a while now. In an ideal situation he would be the centre of the third line but that's not what we have.
Credit to Stéphane Julien, he is running the power play and would be my choice for head coach next year with how well he did in the summer with perhaps the strongest Hlinka team ever. As for Shane Wright, as I’ve mentioned before, I’m not so concerned if he produces tonight offensively, but defensively I imagine he’s going to get the matchup against the top American line and hopefully he’s up to the task
For all the talk of Canada being a one man show, the US is looking suspiciously like a one line team. Shane Wright shutting that line down would be a massive boost to Canada's chances.
