It's not that big of a deal, Dubas isn't picking the team or signing the players to terrible contracts. He's one of the guys in the room but clearly not making decisions. Canada has had worse GMs involved before and won.
Canada could win the gold with my dog doing Dubas job. He won't be a factor in the team winning or losing.
What a joke. Dubas is like the Doc Rivers of the NHL, except Doc at least has a championship. Dude has mastered failing upwards.
Management group additions announced for 4 Nations Face-Off
Julien BriseBois and Kyle Dubas have been added to Canada’s management group for the 2025 4 Nations Face-Off.www.hockeycanada.ca
Not Kyle Dubas
If Hyman falls back down to Earth next year, just as Nugent-Hopkins did last year following his outlier year with McDavid, are his goals from the previous year going to help Canada win? It isn't that hard to make a case for Lafreniere over him given role and room for growth. Realistically Canada could take both, or neither, and it wouldn't shock.
I don't think it really matters that some of those guys were centres. Yzerman for instance almost always played RW for Canada, and many Canadian centres have been shifted to wing. Savard definitely would have been a winger for Canada (and Canada should have taken both of them at times). I certainly don't see a good fit for Marner, as Canada's centres are almost always the playmakers. I think his only realistic fit is as a RW with MacKinnon or maybe Point if he plays centre. McDavid is going to be very puck dominant on his line and Crosby is going to have a lot of the puck and play a cycle game with Marchand. That Marner is a solid defensive player who can PK is the only chance I see for him to make the team honestly.
Some things to note on your analysis of 5v5 Scoring for the upcoming 4-Nations:
That's a good point about Hagel, I wasn't really considering him that much. He's a good player.
Looks like they hired Bear12Good as an assistant.
I guess we can fantasize about what if Hyman has an almost unprecedented progression from his peak at age 32.. who knows, maybe he somehow shoots higher than 19% next year or McDavid goes for 120 assists or something. I'd rather be realistic about the guy. He's a good player and a very hard worker, but the main reason people have him on this team is that he plays with McDavid. On his own he wouldn't make this team and wouldn't generate much discussion.
I'll somewhat give you today's Stamkos tho not really cuz he's still better than Hyman. You're out here comparing Zach Hyman to the St. Louis years??? Too young to have seen and attest to the other guys, but I don't think you can put Hull and Hyman in the same sentence.
I don't think those are good comparisons. First off each of them had multiple elite years, not a sudden one in their 30s, and they did more away from the other player. Kurri had an elite season after Gretzky was gone. Hull was elite after Oates was gone, and also scored less in collaboration with Oates than most would think. LeClair managed to nearly keep his scoring pace when Lindros missed time. Stamkos' best season (2012) he wasn't even St. Louis' even strength linemate.
Tavares was good at the iihf world championship and I fully expect Armstrong to be conservative. USA always seems to be conservative. I wouldn't be totally shocked by Tavares but it would be disappointing.
You're drastically overrating Hyman. He isn't one of Canada's best goal scorers who happens to play with McDavid, he's a Canadian who happened to play with McDavid and thus looked better at goal scoring. Going into last season Hyman's career shooting percentage was around 12.6%. Not really surprising for a non-skill player, and even Ovechkin's career shooting percentage isn't much higher. If Hyman shot at 12.6% last year rather than almost 19% he'd have scored 36 goals. I can see Hyman settling in general at a percentage above 12.6% if he's with McDavid, but that 19% was not the norm and should not be expected as he gets furhter into his 30s. There is next to no chance that Hyman scores 35 goals on a team like Seattle.
Eh, I don't see a guy who has scored 30 twice, after age 30, and who generally plays with McDavid and on the Edmonton powerplay as someone who scores 30 goals no matter what team he's on. Last year if he could shoot that high on any team then yes, but even in 2023 he doesn't get 30+ on just any team. Hyman knows where to go and will work hard to get there. There is value in that. I think that plenty of players who don't currently look like great goal scorers could have matched or surpassed Hyman's results, and most of those players are younger and more projectable to the 2026 Olympics. On the other hand, I do like that Hyman is a bit more battle tested now after a nice long playoff run.
