Prospect Info: Sharks at the 2025 World Juniors (Dickinson, Svoboda, Halttunen, Kirsch)

[Barrie22]

I really do not like the canadian players that has played in the nhl for a handful of games before being sent back to the chl being on these teams. To many hero plays from cowan and ritchie that leads to nothing but a turnover

 

[pspete]

The Canadian coach clearly doesn't like pairing Dickinson and Bonk.

Since Schaefer got hurt the D pairings are the 2 Preds, Bonk-Price, Dickinson-Akey

 

[Saskatoon]

Yeesh Canada got bailed out by that penalty

 

[Saskatoon]

Spoke too soon

 

[pspete]

What a great game!

 

[rideaucrusher21]

nice to see Dickinson out there at the end of OT

 

[Baysick]

What an upset by Latvia!

 

[Sandisfan]

Wow What a Game!!!!!

 

[tiburon12]

Cowan and a few others have to wear that loss, they tried to play hero in OT instead of making a simple pass.

 

[Barrie22]

Cowan can go home now please, bring back someone with actual talent. Cowan was useless last year and is still useless this year.

 

[TheBeard]

Cowan and a few others have to wear that loss, they tried to play hero in OT instead of making a simple pass.

This is literally all Cowan does.

 

[The Nemesis]

Cowan can go home now please, bring back someone with actual talent. Cowan was useless last year and is still useless this year.

But he's a Leafs prospect, so he automatically gets like a +10 prestige boost.

 

[Tw1ster]

I’m just baffled at the usage of Dickinson. For an offence starved team, you’d think they’d use the top scoring dman in the juniors this year on the power play and over time

 

[Juxtaposer]

I’m just baffled at the usage of Dickinson. For an offence starved team, you’d think they’d use the top scoring dman in the juniors this year on the power play and over time

You can clearly see that they told Dickinson to focus on defense and play as conservatively as possible. In situations where he'd be pinching 100% of the time in London he's clearly backing off to defend the rush instead. Very few homerun pass attempts. And he has been pretty effective defensively, but I agree, I think they need to unleash Sam, especially if Schaefer is out for the rest of the tourney.

 

[The Nemesis]

I’m just baffled at the usage of Dickinson. For an offence starved team, you’d think they’d use the top scoring dman in the juniors this year on the power play and over time

This is what hockey canada does. They build a team to their blueprint and then they cram players in and demand they play the role assigned to them. It doesn't matter that Dickinson is the top scoring d-man in the CHL. It matters that they brought him to be the 6th/7th D and he'd damn well better backcheck and never get caught up ice or there'll be hell to pay.

It's why Canada so often underperforms. Instead of figuring out what they can do with all the talent available to them and building a team that plays to those strengths they willingly make less talented rosters because they pick for need or force-fit guys into spots that don't make proper use of their talent.

 

[Lebanezer]

kid has no awareness. DND

That looked awful, and if he needs surgery his season may essentially be over.

 

[The Nemesis]

I love that hockey twitter is having a meltdown now over the exclusion of Parekh and Yakemchuk as if Dickinson isn't on this rosterand shoehorned into a #6D shutdown role that keeps him out of any sort of offensive contributions for the team.

Honestly, not taking Misa is the bigger problem for them. Because why would they want a highly offensively capable two-way center when they can have GRINDERZZZZZZ!!!!?

 

[Star Platinum]

That looked awful, and if he needs surgery his season may essentially be over.

Bad for Schaefer, bad for his draft prospects, bad for the Sharks if they're in position to take him, but possibly good for Dickinson's WJC prospects.

 

[Shark Finn]

I love that hockey twitter is having a meltdown now over the exclusion of Parekh and Yakemchuk as if Dickinson isn't on this rosterand shoehorned into a #6D shutdown role that keeps him out of any sort of offensive contributions for the team.

Honestly, not taking Misa is the bigger problem for them. Because why would they want a highly offensively capable two-way center when they can have GRINDERZZZZZZ!!!!?

I'm really out of touch with any team's roster building philosophy, but I've heard that some of Canada's choices are rather questionable. Could anyone care to elaborate?

And, about the upset..

Lovely, lovely work. I have nothing against Canada and nothing for Latvia, but holy smokes. Every single Canadian in that building was expecting a win. The look on those faces: priceless.

 

[The Nemesis]

I'm really out of touch with any team's roster building philosophy, but I've heard that some of Canada's choices are rather questionable. Could anyone care to elaborate?

And, about the upset..

Lovely, lovely work. I have nothing against Canada and nothing for Latvia, but holy smokes. Every single Canadian in that building was expecting a win. The look on those faces: priceless.

This was touched on above here, but the big problem with Hockey Canada is that they treat international tournaments like they're league GMs building a regular NHL team instead of a group that can basically craft an all-star team out of the biggest talent pool in the world.

Countries like Latvia or Germany, or even Finland to some extent build teams with defined roles and traditional line structures because partially they've historically learned to offset any differences in overall talent level with sacrificing, team-first, defense-first, selfless players who will supplicate themselves to a system designed to overcome their weaknesses. Canada doesn't have to and shouldn't do this because they still represent the single biggest hockey-player-producing nation on the planet and generally have a slightly disproportionate share of the pool of super high-end talent. They could probably roll 3 punishing scoring lines and a 4th line that would be most teams' defensively responsible second line in most years. They could do 3 D pairings with mobile, agile, players where there's a dedicated point-man/offensive D on every pair. But they don't. The pretend at being poor and believe they have to make a team like they're working with a shallow pool of players or a salary cap in play or something.

So they want things like a 3rd line of energy guys and a 4th line that's a checking line, and a bottom defensive pairing that's chiefly concerned with shutdown defensive work. It meant that they left offensively talented players at home like Parekh and Yakemchuk, Beckett Sennecke, Michael Misa, and Andrew Cristall and now they're paying for it as they looked lost offensively against Latvia and didn't exactly blow the doors off Finland. Plus of the players that made the team they took Dickinson, the highest scoring blueliner in the country heading into the tournament and shoehorned him into a 3rd pairing defensive role where, as Jux notes, it very much looks like he's been told to play ultra-conservative, no-risk hockey that sacrifices all of his offensive opportunity in order to maintain absolute defensive coverage. He runs the second best powerplay in the OHL and the Knights collectively have the most PP goals and he doesn't sniff a second of PP time on Canada, even as the non-QB on PP2. Carson Rekhopf is one of the OHL's leading scorers and he's basically a healthy scratch but is also not even officially on the roster. They fail to score goals and then don't talk about all the offence that's left on the bench, pressbox, or halfway across the country. instead they talk about how the guys need to buckle down and believe in the system and play the game "the right way".

They're a five-star restaurant that acts like they're McDonalds and then gets surprised when nobody wants their cardboard burgers given that the people know they could be eating the best steak you've ever had instead.

 

[Shark Finn]

This was touched on above here, but the big problem with Hockey Canada is that they treat international tournaments like they're league GMs building a regular NHL team instead of a group that can basically craft an all-star team out of the biggest talent pool in the world.

Thanks. This was my hunch too. Oh well. Makes the tournament a tiny bit more interesting for non-Canadians too. Even if I'd love to see the U20 All-Star team going bonkers.

 

[The Nemesis]

Thanks. This was my hunch too. Oh well. Makes the tournament a tiny bit more interesting for non-Canadians too. Even if I'd love to see the U20 All-Star team going bonkers.

It does. And make no mistake, even as a Canadian angry with this team's management for so badly screwing the process up, watching the Latvians pull off that upset was amazing.

But it's just kind of another aspect of hockey culture that is broken. It's 20-freaking-25 almost and yet we still have old-heads stuck in the 1970s thinking that you have to build a team the same way they always have, playing the same game that Canada always has for things to work out.

Canada crushed teams before because the talent gap was big enough to overcome the crappy roster construction. That gap has shrunk and now they can't coast on the knowledge that their grindy 4th line players are better than most B and C nations' 1st liners and let that paper over their mistakes.

It also doesn't help that Canada has been in a goaltending-production funk for what seems like nearly 20 years so whenever they bring in a netminder who can't just single-handedly steal games for them they all go "See? see!?!?! We have to have 4th line grinders and a 3rd pairing shutdown duo or we might give up 4 goals against Slovakia!"

 

[Celly4Celebrini]

looked to me like his shoulder came out based on where the post was and the impact point.

Something like a 4-8 week recovery depending on severity, longer if he damaged the labrum in there as well.

 

[rideaucrusher21]

You can clearly see that they told Dickinson to focus on defense and play as conservatively as possible. In situations where he'd be pinching 100% of the time in London he's clearly backing off to defend the rush instead. Very few homerun pass attempts. And he has been pretty effective defensively, but I agree, I think they need to unleash Sam, especially if Schaefer is out for the rest of the tourney.

Reminds me of the Zlatan quote: You bought a Ferrari, but you drive it like a Fiat

 

[Beethovens 10th]

Hot. Dog.

I’m thinking Schaefer needs to wear that helmet off the ice too cause, and this may come as a surprise to him, there are plenty of more decidedly solid, material, and inanimate objects outside the rink that he might be taking for granted as well…

On a plus side for the Sharks drafting him: he already knows how to drive an SUV in Milpitas.