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

[Timo Time]

I think there's more of an indictment on Team Canada as a whole rather than solely picking on players in the lineup who didn't perform. Prospect section is grilling Sam, and rightfully so in some aspects; but primarily that entire team was out of sync and not good.

 

[TheBeard]

I think there's more of an indictment on Team Canada as a whole rather than solely picking on players in the lineup who didn't perform. Prospect section is grilling Sam, and rightfully so in some aspects; but primarily that entire team was out of sync and not good.

I think we all sort of hyped up the potential based on the fact that three of the top four projected picks in the upcoming draft were all a part of the squad, but Martone is ok, McKenna is 17 and Schaefer got hurt early.

The D could have used Yak but to be honest I don't think it would have made much of a difference.

 

[Zarzh]

I think we all sort of hyped up the potential based on the fact that three of the top four projected picks in the upcoming draft were all a part of the squad, but Martone is ok, McKenna is 17 and Schaefer got hurt early.

The D could have used Yak but to be honest I don't think it would have made much of a difference.

I think people (including the coaching staff) just expected Catton to be a gamebreaker. While people will repeatedly point out he wasn't as bad as his point totals, he had one assist which is horrible.

 

[The Nemesis]

I think people (including the coaching staff) just expected Catton to be a gamebreaker. While people will repeatedly point out he wasn't as bad as his point totals, he had one assist which is horrible.

Hard to be a gamebreaker when there are so few high end offensive talents around you. Catton's great, but he's not Celebrini who's able to do it all himself.

 

[TheBeard]

Hard to be a gamebreaker when there are so few high end offensive talents around you. Catton's great, but he's not Celebrini who's able to do it all himself.

I think they were expecting that from McKenna

 

[The Nemesis]

I've been reading some of the quotes from Dave Cameron today and it seems pretty clear that a lot of this rests on him. He was asked if he regrets anything about how the tournament unfolded and he bluntly said "no". He was asked about not practicing for most of the last 3 days and his answer was just that the guys were tired. I've seen people who said they played for him and said that he's combative and inflexible.

I'm not a "sky is falling, hockey canada needs a reckoning" person, but this could be the easiest and first chance for the organization to really look at how it builds teams and runs tournaments and addresses its flaws.

Someone on the main boards said that the problem is that Hockey Canada built a team for a 7-game series, not for a single elimination tournament, and that's the issue. But they won't address it because it used to be that even if the org handcuffed itself the natural talent level of Canada was enough that even their B team was good enough to walk most other countries. But other countries have caught up. The US has caught up. Sweden most of the time has caught up. The Fins are not quite there on talent, but their work ethic means they're essentially caught up. The Czechs, Slovaks, Swiss can all threaten. Even the "bad" top tier countries like Germany or Latvia have caught up enough that they don't always have to be a cakewalk. It doesn't matter that they've still won a couple golds in the last 3-7 years. They're still good enough that they should probably win more often than not if they can come at it with anything close to full strength. But they don't because for 50+ years they coasted on believing that it was the result of being hard-nosed gritty grinders with heart that played the game the "right" way and not because they have historically also been the single most powerful hockey nation on the planet since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

 

[The Nemesis]

oh my god...

Hockey Canada brass stand by choices after second straight World Juniors ‘disaster’

Canada's quarterfinal exit at the World Juniors boiled down to too many penalties and not enough goals.

www.nytimes.com

“The buck stops with me,” Salmond said. “The Program of Excellence is my responsibility. And so like other Canadians, I’m incredibly disappointed. I’m apologetic. … It’s not unacceptable but we can’t accept it. It’s something that we’ll work very diligently on improving. … You can blame me. If you think it’s scouting, I hire the scout. If you think it’s coaching, I hire the coach.”

At the end of the day, he said, it boiled down to too many penalties and not enough goals.

“That’s how we got here,” he said.

They stood by their decisions, though.
...

"...And then at the end, Dave doesn’t score goals, it’s his job to put players in positions to do that and I thought he did that.”

...

“We didn’t score at times and that seemed to be a collective thing. I don’t know how to explain that,” he said. “We didn’t want to go with one-way players. We didn’t want to go with just competitors that didn’t have any skill and I thought we had a good combination of it. … I think the process was a sound process and I think we brought the players that we thought were the most deserving to have spots, and I thought we had a real good team that was capable of winning a gold medal.”
...
“When I look at our group, I like our team, I think there’s a lot of talent there, we can skate, and we can do a lot of good things and we just didn’t get it done,” he added.

...

“I think we’ve proven to do things the right way, with the right people, and so that’s not going to change,” Salmond said. “I don’t think the results are always indicative of the people or the process.




Holy hell

1) It sure sounds like he's basically throwing hte players under the bus for not being good enough

and

2) "we did everything right. How we did everything is fine." is not what you say when your team has significantly underperformed for the second straight year with easily identifiable issues at the forefront.

You say "Clearly this isn't what we envisioned and we have to figure out why that is and change it."

If you can't honestly assess your own performance you can never expect to make meaningful self-improvement.

 

[one2gamble]

lol, Canada is going to have a rough time if thats really what they believe in the room

 

[wickedwitch]

lol, Canada is going to have a rough time if thats really what they believe in the room

But they won't. They have enough talent that it masks their incompetence often enough.

 

[Saskatoon]

Hockey Canada as an organization needs some brain surgery but that won't happen

Skipping 3 practices blows my mind. The tired excuse only holds water if there is a massive team wide illness. It was in Canada so can't even blame jet lag

Canada as a whole is fine. Imagine if Celebrini and Bedard were let go by their teems? Sure States could have Smith but he isn't on their level.

 

[Zarzh]

Hard to be a gamebreaker when there are so few high end offensive talents around you. Catton's great, but he's not Celebrini who's able to do it all himself.

I mean you'd want him to be able to take over against Latvia and Germany playing with some middling players at the very least. He didn't look as bad at his numbers were, but his numbers were awful.

 

[one2gamble]

But they won't. They have enough talent that it masks their incompetence often enough.

Clearly not

 

[The Nemesis]

Clearly not

The problem is that they have enough talent to mask it sometimes. All it takes is them winning gold once to go "see? there are no problems" even if they then struggle for the next 3-5 years.

 

[themelkman]

The problem is that they have enough talent to mask it sometimes. All it takes is them winning gold once to go "see? there are no problems" even if they then struggle for the next 3-5 years.

All it really wouldve taken is a Celebrini or Bedard and the team would probably still get gold. Canada normally wins because the top end talent is miles above most other teams.

 

[The Nemesis]

All it really wouldve taken is a Celebrini or Bedard and the team would probably still get gold. Canada normally wins because the top end talent is miles above most other teams.

And that's kind of the problem. Like that kid that never studies because they ace every test, Canada can and often does skate by on building their wonky, sub-optimal teams simply because the B or C or D team that they can put together is on the level of a lot of countries' A and B efforts.

The compounding issue is that when they do get challenged and fall flat on their faces instead of going "wait, maybe this is something we should figure out how to improve." they just shrug and go "huh, I guess it happens sometimes" and then use the next time they win as confirmation that there was no issue all along and everything is just fine.

 

[themelkman]

And that's kind of the problem. Like that kid that never studies because they ace every test, Canada can and often does skate by on building their wonky, sub-optimal teams simply because the B or C or D team that they can put together is on the level of a lot of countries' A and B efforts.

The compounding issue is that when they do get challenged and fall flat on their faces instead of going "wait, maybe this is something we should figure out how to improve." they just shrug and go "huh, I guess it happens sometimes" and then use the next time they win as confirmation that there was no issue all along and everything is just fine.

Completely agree, would be nice to get different management in but thats just another on the massive pile of hockey canada issues.

 

[The Nemesis]

Completely agree, would be nice to get different management in but thats just another on the massive pile of hockey canada issues.

Really, the massive pile of hockey canada issues can mostly be traced back to the overriding single issue of "the hockey canada braintrust/management is full of self-important blowhards who can't honestly self-assess their performance and make the necessary corrections even if they're uncomfortable or damaging to themselves.

They can't fix crappy hockey culture because that would require admitting they've aided and abetted in fostering that culture.

They can't honestly address the most despicable behavior of some of their membership because that would mean that they recognize their complicity in enabling and covering up said behavior.

They can't address the inequities in the availability of the sport in this country because that would mean that a lot of their grassroots "grow the game" stuff has been aimed at enriching them rather than enriching the game.

They can't correct the faults in their team construction and coaching/management selections because it would mean admitting that the fault lies with them and not the players for not working hard enough or doing "the right things" to win games when it was demanded of them.

The snake rots from the head but when there's no brain in there it's hard to expect them to think things through properly.

 

[Barrie22]

Other coaches in the world? We lose and play bad extra practice time. Dave Cameron extra days off.

 

[The Nemesis]

"Sweden has been in 17 of the last 19 semifinals at the world juniors. But has only won 1 gold medal."


Sweden: the San Jose Sharks of world juniors. Except better because they've actually won something.

 

[LadyStanley]

 

[LadyStanley]

 

[MackAttack71]

Halttunen with a secondary assist on the gwg in OT.

 

[The Nemesis]

Every Sweden game I hear Edstrom's name and it takes me a minute to 1) figure out why I know the name then 2) once I've figured out #1, remember that he's not a Shark anymore.

 

[The Nemesis]

Sweden Shorked it. I guess that's what they get for trusting a guy named Melker in net.

 

[The Nemesis]

Halttunen with a secondary assist on the gwg in OT.

He was Finland's player of the game and got the cool painted canoe paddle.