The end of the Italian development project

[Gianpaolo]

Italy started a few years ago a development project, giving their own players more responsibilities and adding less import players from Canada to the team. Italy still remained an "elevator nation", i.e. a national team that earns promotion to the top level one year but doesn’t perform well enough to stay at the elite level the next year.
This year Austria is going be the competitor for the fight against relegation and will in the end probably be ahead by a nose. The plan how to fulfil the gap is closing the proect and calling the Italian Canadians back.
During the last EIHC tournament in Hungary Devin DiDiomete, Phil Pietroniro, Anthony Bardaro and Marco Rosa played all the first game for Italy. Angelo Miceli and Alex Petan will be the next ones in Februar. Clayton Beddoes, the coach, was recently filmed in the arena of Ambri Piotta talking with defensman Nick Plastino. According with rumours, he already tried to convince Brian Ihnacak to make a come back and proposed to Chris DiDomenico (Langnau) to join the team (Beddoes doesn't even known of DiDomenico being ineligible as a former WCJ winner with Canada). Italy has ever had a deep lack of snipers, centers and offensive defensmen. How many of those players could able to solve or mitigate the areas of weaknesses in the team, is questionable. The only certainty is that the Italian native players are really disappointed about this plan change and this is really bad for the team spirit.

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[Jon Riley]

That's odd, it seemed to me that the strategy was slowly giving some results. Ok, the promotion was lucky and unexpected, probably not particularly deserved either, but finally I saw glimpses of actual hockey players playing hockey matches.
Ok, Plastino would probably be a great addition, specially because of his offensive upside, but he has been refusing to show up years after years. Ihnacak probably also would bring a lot, specially because Scandella is not getting any younger and people that scores are needed, but all the others....meh.

 

[jj cale]

Italy started a few years ago a development project, giving their own players more responsibilities and adding less import players from Canada to the team. Italy still remained an "elevator nation", i.e. a national team that earns promotion to the top level one year but doesn’t perform well enough to stay at the elite level the next year.
This year Austria is going be the competitor for the fight against relegation and will in the end probably be ahead by a nose. The plan how to fulfil the gap is closing the proect and calling the Italian Canadians back.
During the last EIHC tournament in Hungary Devin DiDiomete, Phil Pietroniro, Anthony Bardaro and Marco Rosa played all the first game for Italy. Angelo Miceli and Alex Petan will be the next ones in Februar. Clayton Beddoes, the coach, was recently filmed in the arena of Ambri Piotta talking with defensman Nick Plastino. According with rumours, he already tried to convince Brian Ihnacak to make a come back and proposed to Chris DiDomenico (Langnau) to join the team (Beddoes doesn't even known of DiDomenico being ineligible as a former WCJ winner with Canada). Italy has ever had a deep lack of snipers, centers and offensive defensmen. How many of those players could able to solve or mitigate the areas of weaknesses in the team, is questionable. The only certainty is that the Italian native players are really disappointed about this plan change and this is really bad for the team spirit.

Clayton Beddoes, now theres a name I haven't heard in ages, remember watching him when he played at Lake Superior State in the early 90's and a few games with the bruins when he was with them for a cup of coffee.

 

[kabidjan18]

Interesting. Some of those Italo-Canadians aren't great players either.

Miceli and Petan should be in for sure. Even so, giving one of the other nations a run would be pretty hard.

 

[Urbanskog]

Miceli and Petan should be in for sure. Even so, giving one of the other nations a run would be pretty hard.

Well, they are going to be in the same group as your Austria in next year's World Championship.

 

[kabidjan18]

Well, they are going to be in the same group as your Austria in next year's World Championship.

Yeah, I mean there is still a visible gap between Austria or Norway and Italy. But I understand, their #1 goal is to stay up.

Getting Nick Plastino would be huge. Defensemen of that nature are rare among the mid-majors.

 

[SoundAndFury]

Well, they realized that if they give more responsibilities to their own players they will end up in D1B eventually. Where their U20s barely manage to hang in. It doesn't solve any issues with the development program being terrible but probably helps to feel better about themselves. It's like Italy's decision makers can't decide do they want to actually improve as a hockey country or do they want to look like they are a decent hockey country.

 

[Gianpaolo]

Yeah, I mean there is still a visible gap between Austria or Norway and Italy. But I understand, their #1 goal is to stay up.

Getting Nick Plastino would be huge. Defensemen of that nature are rare among the mid-majors.

Right, but the chance for Italy to stay up is really small. However, success is still the overwhelming criterion for judging coaches. Italian hockey has always been used to underrate the own developed players and overrate Italian Canadians. A relegation with any elegible imports means the coach tried anything he could , a relegation with a few means the coach has to deal with criticism for reducing the imports. Even if most of the new elegible Italian Canadians do not make so much sense in the short or long term.
- Marco Rosa is over the hill and can only help the national team just for a couple of seasons
- Anthony Bardaro has put some numbers up at the Alps Hockey League level so far, but not so many more than players like Alex Frei or Raphael Andergassen.
- Devin DiDiomete is the kind of player which is going to disappear in the modern hockey. Plays with too much grit, cannot watch himself and would rather be on the penalty box than on the ice. Playing too long at PK is the worst can happen to Italy.
- Angelo Miceli is offensively too much focus on himself to care about someone else in the line and has a too bad defensive play.
- Alex Petan showed in the recent Champions League game against Plzen that he needs to take better decisions on the ice if he wants to perform at a better level.
So at the end of the day, I came to the conclusion that most of the Italian Canadians are not going to be great additions for team Italy. The best choice would still be the own developed players which proved in the last years their ability to play with discipline against tough opponents.

 

[Jon Riley]

- Devin DiDiomete is the kind of player which is going to disappear in the modern hockey. Plays with too much grit, cannot watch himself and would rather be on the penalty box than on the ice. Playing too long at PK is the worst can happen to Italy.

This. One of the main reason Italy got promoted has been that finally they played smart games staying out of the box.
The dumb penalty that finally opens the scoring floodgates in a close and tense match has been for ages one of the signature features of the italian team. Keep dumb players away from the team, please

 

[Urbanskog]

Yeah, I mean there is still a visible gap between Austria or Norway and Italy. But I understand, their #1 goal is to stay up.

Getting Nick Plastino would be huge. Defensemen of that nature are rare among the mid-majors.

By default, Austria is obviously stronger. It is however not unheard of for Italy to beat Austria, much depends on how strong of a team does Austria manage to assemble — the D1A rosters have generally been far from ideal.

 

[Gianpaolo]

Well, they realized that if they give more responsibilities to their own players they will end up in D1B eventually. Where their U20s barely manage to hang in.

Italy has enough U20 players to pursue an higher goal than stay at D1B level. Stephan Deluca is playing for Biel and has 9+13 points so far in the Swiss Junior Elite League, while Stefan Spinell collected 7 goals and 8 assists for Davos. Netminder Davide Fadani is a high-rated prospect in Lugano. They will all start a professional carrier in the NLA as soon as they don't count against the foreign-contingent.

 

[kabidjan18]

Right, but the chance for Italy to stay up is really small. However, success is still the overwhelming criterion for judging coaches. Italian hockey has always been used to underrate the own developed players and overrate Italian Canadians. A relegation with any elegible imports means the coach tried anything he could , a relegation with a few means the coach has to deal with criticism for reducing the imports. Even if most of the new elegible Italian Canadians do not make so much sense in the short or long term.
- Marco Rosa is over the hill and can only help the national team just for a couple of seasons
- Anthony Bardaro has put some numbers up at the Alps Hockey League level so far, but not so many more than players like Alex Frei or Raphael Andergassen.
- Devin DiDiomete is the kind of player which is going to disappear in the modern hockey. Plays with too much grit, cannot watch himself and would rather be on the penalty box than on the ice. Playing too long at PK is the worst can happen to Italy.
- Angelo Miceli is offensively too much focus on himself to care about someone else in the line and has a too bad defensive play.
- Alex Petan showed in the recent Champions League game against Plzen that he needs to take better decisions on the ice if he wants to perform at a better level.
So at the end of the day, I came to the conclusion that most of the Italian Canadians are not going to be great additions for team Italy. The best choice would still be the own developed players which proved in the last years their ability to play with discipline against tough opponents.

Miceli and Petan are without a doubt great additions to the team...they would indisputably be the best forwards on the team.

I'm not disputing that there's some merit to the notion of eliminating legios from the Nationalteam pool. Austria did that as well a while back.

By default, Austria is obviously stronger. It is however not unheard of for Italy to beat Austria, much depends on how strong of a team does Austria manage to assemble — the D1A rosters have generally been far from ideal.

They've only played once in recent history.

It has been far from ideal, but Austria doesn't need ideal. Last year was also sub-ideal, but the roster assembled still managed to be far stronger than the Italian roster. Daniel Woger was a 4th liner last year. He would have been their best forward. Anything can happen, for sure. But even if they stacked up their team with legios, there would still be a visible gap. The same is true for Norway.

 

[SoundAndFury]

Italy has enough U20 players to pursue an higher goal than stay at D1B level. Stephan Deluca is playing for Biel and has 9+13 points so far in the Swiss Junior Elite League, while Stefan Spinell collected 7 goals and 8 assists for Davos. Netminder Davide Fadani is a high-rated prospect in Lugano. They will all start a professional carrier in the NLA as soon as they don't count against the foreign-contingent.

Doing well in Swiss junior doesn't mean much, see Emilijus Krakauskas. They are nowhere close to NLA at this point from what I've seen in the international play. Deluca scored 1 point in U18 championship last year for a team he was supposed to lead.

 

[kabidjan18]

Well, they realized that if they give more responsibilities to their own players they will end up in D1B eventually. Where their U20s barely manage to hang in. It doesn't solve any issues with the development program being terrible but probably helps to feel better about themselves. It's like Italy's decision makers can't decide do they want to actually improve as a hockey country or do they want to look like they are a decent hockey country.

Probably not, because there are 16 teams in the senior WC and 10 in the WJC, so a D1B junior team is a D1A senior team.

Stefan Spinell is a good player, plays a mature game, I could see him scoring 10 points in the NLB next season.

 

[SoundAndFury]

Probably not, because there are 16 teams in the senior WC and 10 in the WJC, so a D1B junior team is a D1A senior team.

Naturally. However, if they iced local players only Poland could definitely kick them out of D1A one of those times. Because their U20 is about to drop to D2A one of those years, they were a shootout goal away from it last year. Unless they pick it up but I just don't see any forward momentum from Italy at the moment.

 

[kabidjan18]

Naturally. However, if they iced local players only Poland could definitely kick them out of D1A one of those times. Because their U20 is about to drop to D2A one of those years, they were a shootout goal away from it last year. Unless they pick it up but I just don't see any forward momentum from Italy at the moment.

Well their only naturalized players from last year were McMonagle, Sullivan, and Scandella.

Their U20 certainly won't drop this year, but probably isn't strong enough to be promoted either.

I think the problem is "going natural" and then expecting immediate results. This is true for both national teams and leagues. People are like "we will just drop the imports, and our young athletes will grow up to be superstars", and it's like "no...not really." It takes many generations of well-trained youth to ice a solid team. Too often, clubs just assume if they give one or two generations a chance, they'll get a superstar bunch. But likely, those kids just aren't that talented. You can't say golden generation and then it happens. So after one or two generations fail to kick in, they just call off the project.

 

[Gianpaolo]

Doing well in Swiss junior doesn't mean much, see Emilijus Krakauskas. They are nowhere close to NLA at this point from what I've seen in the international play. Deluca scored 1 point in U18 championship last year for a team he was supposed to lead.

Both Deluca and Fadani do not have the four consecutive hockey seasons in Swiss junior which are needed not to count against the foreign contingent. They were both tested in preseason games this year and last year. Lugano was already investigating about Fadani's chances to apply for the Swiss citizenship and this is definitely a prove that the club is planning to give him a role in the senior team after Elvis Merzlikins will move to America.