U18: USA Roster

[razor ray]

 

[William H Bonney]

Good performance today, especially defensively. Looks like the team has adjusted to their embarrassing round robin performance.

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

Knight was excellent.

Samuelsson was excellent. He's been as good as anyone on the team this tournament.

Farabee, Wise, Pivonka and Miller with big games.

Good team performance.

 

[razor ray]

Here it is for today:

 

[AmericanDream]

so far so good, need to finish strong but Wahlstrom, Caufield, and Hughes have been doing what they do all tournament long, creating havoc out there. I really liked Stastney again today, kid has been impressive and strong out there.

 

[William H Bonney]

Pretty easy semifinal for the team. Outside a few short stretches, the Czechs rarely had sustained puck possession and didn't generate much at all. Dostal was the only reason this wasn't also lopsided on the scoreboard.

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

Czech's weren't any good. Russia was more like a semi-final opponent, and Czech's were more like a QF opponent.

 

[William H Bonney]

You can't be that bad on special teams and expect to win. Disappointing finish for a disappointing age group.

Wahlstrom missing a wide open net to end it summarizes his performance in today's game.

Congrats, Finland.

 

[SanDogBrewin]

Spencer Knight and USA come up short but, as usual, great tournament.

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

Not winning is a failure. We had the better team and more talented team going in. I can't consider that tournament a success.

Appert gave too big of a role to Adam Samuelsson after he had a good few games. He's still the worst defenseman on the team, and should've been playing about as much as DeBoer was playing. You don't need to roll 7D. Gruden got way too big of a leash. Did he have any primary points the whole tournament? The big names offensively had their chances to score today, but the puck didn't go in. Sometimes that happens. Credit to Finland who pressured us well, but we should've won.

 

[Pavel Buchnevich]

Next year.

Boldy-Hughes-Caufield
Kaliyev-Turcotte-Stranges
Zegras-Beecher-Rolston
Gildon-Weight-Brink
Mastrosimone

York-McCarthy
Warren-Thrun
Kleven-Helleson
Vlasic

Knight
Wolf
Rowe

 

[The Cannon of Tesoma]

I don't think Team US should feel anyway shamed about the result. The final game could've been ended other way too. Very close match.

It's almost cliche for Finns that Team Finland tends often perform better as a team than what is written on a paper about the roster, and that generally lower talented roster manages often perform better as a whole than what would be expected by counting each player individually. That has been traditionally perceived as one of the best strengths of Team Finland (all levels), and it can be backed up to certain degree also by looking to the Medal statistics of historical tournament record. However, recent years there has been dramatic overall improvement in Finns' mental stature, particularly among new generations, previously considered the main weakness of Team Finland. Thanks to successfully applied changes to the coaching system, especially in junior levels. There are still some oscillations of inconsistency in different team complements' psychological readiness reflected in rather dramatic chances between tournament successes, but general trend is very promising. Finns are finally starting to learn how to win. Historically Finns have had tendency to perform far above the level what their normally available player pool would numerically and qualitatively allow (being one of the most consistently Medalling team), but when they have managed to make it to a final, usual, typical outcome has been a loss. A final, sharpened cutting edge of sword have been missing, and that has been routinely attributed to mental/psychological shortcomings, or Finnish psyche etc. Finnish hockey establishment is seemingly successfully cracking and decoding things in these matters, -someone would say -, finally.

Nobody expected much from this U18 Team Finland, but it proved to be one of the most coherent and psychologically strong units in entire Finnish hockey history that has ever represented Finland in international tournaments. That's nice.

I think it's highly probable that Team US and Team Finland will be real main rivals also in years to come, at least on U18 level.

That's nice too.

No shame USA!