Facing Off: 18 Afterthoughts on 2018 World Junior Championship
- Thread starter Larry Fisher
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Looking forward to your feedback and debate on this column. Lots to take in, but I'll be checking back periodically to respond to comments and answer additional questions.
Couldn't help noticing that your chart displaying historical attendance shows Buffalo to still be above almost all other European hosted tournaments. That's including the fact that this tourney is still charging NHL type ticket prices, which is most certainly not the case in Europe. Additionally, the tournament was specifically marketing the outdoor game to the detriment of the other games. They knew that one game had to be a financial success, and if it was, that they would be reaping a financial windfall and that it would insulate them against poor attendance the rest of the tournament. They were right about that. You can choose to disregard the total tournament attendance if you want, but you clearly shouldn't. But outdoor game or not, removing a great gold medal crowd from your attendance number crunching is just wrong. The gold medal game isn't a "one off" deal and every other tournament has benefited from a big GMG crowd. Not really sure how you can honestly say "let's put aside the good crowd for that game so we can focus on the bad crowd size".
That's true, but the fact remains that this year's World Juniors only attracted two good crowds, the outdoor game and the gold-medal game, which inflated that total attendance number. The rest of the tournament was poorly attended, including three medal-round games featuring the host team. It's bad when the quarterfinal vs Russia, semifinal vs Sweden and bronze-medal game vs Czech Republic barely adds up to one sellout for Team USA.
I hear ya, and I am as bothered by the pricey tickets as much if not more than the next guy. However, the IIHF has gotten a real taste for the cash it believes can be brought in by this tournament. With Vancouver and Victoria over half sold with a year of sales time still to go, we are definitely not going to have attendance problems... and maybe that's a bad thing as far as the pricing structure goes for future events.
JackSlater
Registered User
- Apr 27, 2010
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Mete doesn't deserve to be listed as a disappointment. Canada's best defenceman defensively and if he hadn't missed a game he probably would have been Canada's most valuable defenceman overall. Yes, he was coming from the NHL but he was a marginal NHLer and no reasonable person would have expected him to come to the tournament and be completely dominant.
Agreed. And it looks like the 2021 tournament will be back in Alberta (Edmonton primarily) where attendance won't be an issue, regardless of pricing, as long as the oil industry is booming/doing decent. That 2012 tournament in Alberta is where the cash cow really started, so organizers will want to keep ramping up the pricing, rather than reducing, in anticipation of getting back to Alberta. Sad but true.
Any time an NHLer is loaned to a junior tournament, especially as the only NHLer, you have to expect some level of domination or for that player to be a step ahead of the competition. Mete just sort of fit in. He was average among Canada's defencemen in my opinion. You'd expect an NHLer to be well above average so, for that reason, he was a disappointment to me. I expected more from Mete in terms of standing out from shift to shift, game to game. Maybe that is more telling that Mete is a "marginal NHLer" and isn't fully NHL-ready or no more NHL-ready than Timmins or Clague or several other defencemen from this year's tournament.
JackSlater
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- Apr 27, 2010
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There are two issues here. One, Mete was not just average among the Canadian defencemen. He was the best player defensively and at the very least was a play driver on offence. If he had played every game I would probably put him as the top defenceman on the team, but I suppose that honour has to go to Timmins. Makar also might have been better if given more minutes, but he wasn't.
The bigger issue is expecting that he would dominate just because he was in the NHL. Mete was a player just keeping his head above water in the NHL. Low minutes, sometimes scratched. A good NHL player would probably dominate this tournament, but a good NHLer wouldn't be released to play at this tournament in the first place. Mete is a marginal NHLer and shouldn't have been expected to dominate. Think of the players released to play for Canada in the WJC this decade. excluding Nugent-Hopkins who never would have been released if not for the lockout: Mete, Virtanen, Lazar, Dumba, Connolly, Schenn. Only Schenn dominated. The rest ranged from good to Virtanen. Disappointment is a subjective thing, but as said it was never reasonable to expect Mete to dominate. Mete played very well, and that was the reasonable expectation.
That's true, Virtanen was a much bigger disappointment than Mete and the definition is subjective for sure. We agree there.
I still feel Mete was average, not necessarily in a bad way, but I just wasn't blown away by him. No real "wow, that's why he's in the NHL" moments or "holy, you can tell he's an NHLer with that play." He fit in, blended in with the rest of the bunch on Canada's blue line. Maybe that speaks to Montreal's weakness on defence more than it does to the strength of Mete as a player to make the NHL at 19 years old. He's a good player with upside, don't get me wrong, but some Habs (and OHL) fans had been hyping Mete up to be the next Duncan Keith and maybe my hopes were too high for that type of dynamic player. So, in that sense, he was disappointing to me. If I had never watched any North American hockey before that tournament and you told me one of Canada's defencemen was playing in the NHL, my first guess wouldn't have been Mete. I'm not sure he would have been in my top three guesses, to be honest. You'd think picking out the NHLer would/should be obvious. But in Mete's defence, that was a pretty stacked blue line full of future NHLers and potential All-Stars down the road.
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Victor Mete at this year's WJC:
Canadian goals scored at even strength while he was on the ice: 11
Opposition goals scored at even strength while he was on the ice: 0
Keep in mind he missed a game and only played six. So, that's nearly a +2 per game. Add in the fact that he was part of a powerplay that operated at nearly 50%. His point totals weren't huge, but for a defenseman, three in six games is decent production. His skating was breathtaking, and a pretty noticeable point of emphasis for the majority of us here on the hfboards.
With the facts laid down, it appears to me like he had a pretty damn good tournament. However, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and if you went in to the tourney expecting him to put up the numbers Cale Makar did, then I would guess you might be somewhat disappointed. Just know that you're in the vast minority on that one.
Canadian goals scored at even strength while he was on the ice: 11
Opposition goals scored at even strength while he was on the ice: 0
Keep in mind he missed a game and only played six. So, that's nearly a +2 per game. Add in the fact that he was part of a powerplay that operated at nearly 50%. His point totals weren't huge, but for a defenseman, three in six games is decent production. His skating was breathtaking, and a pretty noticeable point of emphasis for the majority of us here on the hfboards.
With the facts laid down, it appears to me like he had a pretty damn good tournament. However, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and if you went in to the tourney expecting him to put up the numbers Cale Makar did, then I would guess you might be somewhat disappointed. Just know that you're in the vast minority on that one.
jj cale
Registered User
That's fair Statsy. The 11-0 stat definitely looks good on Mete. His skating ability did stand out at times, maybe that's where the Duncan Keith comparisons have come from? It's still a stretch IMO, not sure Mete has the same offensive awareness/ability. I could see him becoming more of a smooth-skating, reliable defenceman. Trying to think of a comparison, but maybe somebody like Tobias Enstrom in his prime. Solid but not spectacular. Like the player, in Mete, but wasn't blown away by him as the loan NHLer in the tournament. Maybe I was expecting too much from him on the offensive side of things.
This may be sarcasm but it speaks to my point. Swap out Mete for Josh Mahura, the final cut on defence. Would that have been a noticeable difference? Would Canada have suffered? I don't think so. I feel Mete and Mahura are quite similar and if Mahura was drafted by Montreal rather than Anaheim, maybe he's in the NHL too. I like both players as NHL prospects, but I don't think Mete was any/much better than the rest of Canada's defencemen. He was "average" to me and thus he slid into the "disappointment" category for this column. In saying that, if I were to rank every player at the World Juniors into three categories: 1) Standout 2) Average 3) Disappointment . . . Mete would have been a 2 for me. Disappointment is probably a bit harsh and certainly subjective, as previously mentioned.
