WJC: 2025 Team Canada Roster Talk
- Thread starter LeProspector
- Start date
JackSlater
Registered User
- Apr 27, 2010
- 19,444
- 14,841
They just seem random, or lazy in that one unit is their initial first line. The second posted unit makes some sense at least.
I was in the arena for that one. What a time to be alive. I am 2/2 in world junior gold medal games where Canada blows a lead to Russia in the third period.
TSN definitely seems to be overhyping him but there are a number of issues with those units. I could see Nadeau being over-utilized as well, as he plays PROFESSIONAL hockey... as we will be reminded many times. And of course Howe. Who knows though, they may be great. I'm also not sure that Minten deserves to be the namesake for that prestigious title over Joe Hicketts.
That's my one concern about him. This comes back to the Parekh situation in as much as when you REALLY need a powerplay goal, it's best to have an elite PP pointman.
Yakemchuk was carving up NHL guys in preseason plus has NHL caliber point shot. You take him for that reason.
SpoolCat
Registered User
- Mar 1, 2016
- 607
- 335
There's been a lot of discussion of the grinder role and young players and its interesting to me. Every year around this time I read road to gold by Mark Spector and 30 years of the game at its best edited by Gare Joyce both obviously about the world juniors. Its just insane the emphasis both these books put on playing your role and grinding it out. They almost with glee talk about when stars aren't invited or cut Al MacInnis, Gary Roberts or Patrick Roy are mentioned. In the 1999 chapter they tell us about how the team wasn't the most skilled and then mention they cut 5 first rounders. Then 2 paragraphs later talk about being shut out by Slovakia. Like maybe they would have been able to score with a few of those first rounders. Keep in mind that team didn't even win. There's a quote from Barry Trapp a former Hockey Canada head scout saying he would much rather have a player with high character with less skill vs a highly skilled player with less character.
As for young players its mentioned over and over they don't play as already mentioned Scott Niedermeyer, Joe Thornton, Jason Spezza and Jay Bouwmeester. Meanwhile we have a whole chapter about how great Mike Zigomanis was as 13th forward.
It just goes show that these debates we've been having are old. Hockey Canada does things their way and it appears its very hard for them to change. In some ways we've seen this Nadeau being allowed to play despite missing camp is a big one. Finally making the roster larger is another one. I thought after Bedard and Celebrini we would continue to see young players having more of a chance but maybe or maybe not regarding Schaefer's usage vs McKenna.
Obviously Hockey Canada has won the most gold medals. But I just keep wondering about what Mathieuferkland said about did we win because of Bedard or the grinders? How many tournaments can we ask this about? With all that being said I'm rooting for the boys and hopefully they can pull out the gold.
As for young players its mentioned over and over they don't play as already mentioned Scott Niedermeyer, Joe Thornton, Jason Spezza and Jay Bouwmeester. Meanwhile we have a whole chapter about how great Mike Zigomanis was as 13th forward.
It just goes show that these debates we've been having are old. Hockey Canada does things their way and it appears its very hard for them to change. In some ways we've seen this Nadeau being allowed to play despite missing camp is a big one. Finally making the roster larger is another one. I thought after Bedard and Celebrini we would continue to see young players having more of a chance but maybe or maybe not regarding Schaefer's usage vs McKenna.
Obviously Hockey Canada has won the most gold medals. But I just keep wondering about what Mathieuferkland said about did we win because of Bedard or the grinders? How many tournaments can we ask this about? With all that being said I'm rooting for the boys and hopefully they can pull out the gold.
