And for 60 minutes on Sunday, North America gave us a glimpse of what that might look like.
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The North America select team stunned Finland with a 4-1 victory on the second day of the World Cup of Hockey in Canadian city Toronto. Instead, the team represented by seven different countries, listened to the veteran coach’s message.
Coach Todd McLellan had little choice but to pull him in favour of John Gibson. “I told them they were a much better team than they think they were”. North America’s blazing fast play in exhibition games made it the most intriguing part of the World Cup, and that fascination is only stronger now that it showed it can thrive when it counts.
“What could have happened to our belief system is it could have completely crumbled”.
Add in 2015 No. 2 pick Jack Eichel of the Buffalo Sabres and Calgary Flames star Johnny Gaudreau and North America is not a team to overlook. 2 minutes later, North America got a goal back as Rielly picked up the puck, after a Marchenko blocked shot, and buried it. They also fell 3 1/2 games behind the Boston Red Sox in the division, pending the result of the Sox game against the New York Yankees on Sunday.
Team North America’s Auston Matthews (34) scores against Team Russia goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky …
Don’t be surprise to see Team North America in the semi-finals.
What did you think of Matthews first goal at the Air Canada Centre?
We would disagree with that, however.
Matthews took a pass from linemate Connor McDavid and scored to give North America a 1-0 lead at 5:14 of the first period.
It took a while, but Russian Federation finally started to assert itself. “We’re not making too much of it”. This should be an interesting game – entering the tournament I would have liked the Czech’s chances, but after Saturday’s games I feel like Europe ought to have the edge.
“Obviously we knew we can’t lose the game”, captain Alex Ovechkin said. “But when we play our next opponent, I don’t think there’s going to be any problem as far as our emotion”. Russians understood that North America’s strength was its speed, but that its defence was a potential weakness, particularly with Aaron Ekblad missing Monday night’s game with an upper-body injury. If that is the case, he may miss Thursday’s game as well. It’s an uphill battle for both teams, and we get to bear witness to the fruit of their labors. “As soon as we opened it up and allowed them to use their speed, that’s where you saw them kind of take over the game”. But leadership through adversity?
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The Americans, meanwhile, outshot Europe 35-17 in dropping their first game of the tournament, but weren’t happy with the quality of chances they generated against Jaroslav Halak. “When you’re a group of young players, you’re looking for someone to take charge, settle it down, maybe get a shift or two under your belt”. Like Modano, past USA champions Brett Hull and Jeremy Roenick ripped the team’s performance, with Hull saying on ESPN that he could’ve had a hat trick in that game at age 52 and Roenick tweeting that Europe “embarrassed us”.
