Even setting aside the stupid penalty, Cowan has been a detriment to the Ritchie line. I’d put Yager or even Luchanko, who’s got some pop in his step, up with Ritchie. Cowan to the bottom 6.
I have been advocating for a national team approach but politics and money would end up being a major hurdle.
He assembled a team that he thought he wouldn't have to coach. Just roll the lines and win.
There is money for a national development program, but there is no real benefit to doing it. There is also not a good way to integrate such a team into a league. Improvements can be made but that's not it. As far as a national team coach, I don't like the idea. Canada could end up with a Spott, a Lowry, Tim Hunter, a Letang, even Cameron in that role for years and that is a problem. They just need to do a better job selecting coaches. A hint would be to stick to coaches who have won at the junior level, or NCAA I suppose.
Canada's hockey summit had no impact on the 2002 Olympics, but it did help lay the foundation for the 2005 WJC team and the success that followed at the junior and senior level. Important to keep in mind that Hockey Canada at that time held a summit to fix development after having won 7/8 WJC gold medals. They recognized that development was bad despite WJC success, largely because people freaked out about losing two best on best tournaments. I don't think that Canada has the same level of pride to do that now, though we will see. I do think that we would be further ahead on fixing goaltending issues if there had been best on best tournaments since 2014 and Canada had to accept the post-Price reality sooner.
GM: Kyle Turris
100% this. Having said that, though, I am not sure that it is fair to totally blame Dave Cameron for the poor roster construction. We all know that Hockey Canada runs a "collaborative", committee type structure for the national teams. That's a polite way of saying that the head coach doesn't necessarily get final say on the roster. The head scout, the GM of the program - they both get an outsized voice also. It seems logical to blame Dave Cameron for Luca Pinelli being there over some of the more obvious choices, but he may not be the guy who decided that Howe deserved to be there over Misa, Cristall or Sennecke, or that both Yakemchuk and Parekh should stay home. Cameron will stand before the cameras and take the fall, but there are other suits at Hockey Canada who should be facing the music also.
Yakemchuk is a star play who drives offence from D. He’s 19. It was crazy not having him on the club. This current club can’t score. They need a guy like him.
I don't blame Cameron for the roster, I do blame him in large part for the team playing below its potential. That said I imagine that he was quite happy with the roster that was decided upon.
Is there some kind of (unspoken) hockey Canada “quota” system that guarantees a minimum of players from the various junior leagues?
Don Cherry always ranted about this. It’s hard to know. As a québécois myself there are about 10 other players I would have on this team before Cataford and Gauthier
I think this is a bit of an overreaction. The USNTDP has plenty of warts and may end up seeing significant changes over the next few years. In general, all Canada needs to do to compete for gold is select the right roster. They decided to get cute this year and are having a hard time scoring.
We can't really know that but I expect we will always see at least one player from each of the three major junior leagues.
