Members of the American team were not amused.
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“It’s disappointing. It’s nearly to say that we were coasting or don’t care, weren’t representing our countries as well as we could have”, said David Backes, who skated alongside Kessel at the 2010 and 2014 Olympics.
Team North America gained a 1-0 lead only 30 seconds into the game on Auston Matthews’ goal.
Should there be a change in philosophy when it comes to Team USA’s style of play? “Felt like I should be doing something important, but couldn”t put my finger on it,” Kessel tweed from his [at sign] PKessel81 account.
Whenever another worldwide tournament goes down – hopefully at the Olympics in 2018 – turn the keys over to guys like Auston Matthews, Jack Eichel, Brandon Saad, Johnny Gaudreau, Justin Faulk, et al. Now it sounds like there will be some carryover into the regular season between former Team USA teammates, and perhaps some extra fireworks this season between the Bruins and Penguins spurred on by athis World Cup of Hockey brouhaha.
The U.S. opted for old-guard players like forward Brandon Dubinsky, defencemen Jack Johnson and Erik Johnson and grinder Justin Abdelkader.
Does the US program have enough talent to compete with Canada and the other powerhouses of worldwide play? Not only could the Americans not beat the tournament favourite but they weren’t able to knock them around, either.
“There are some guys coming up who are going to be making some noise in American hockey and we’ll see what the team looks like heading into the (2018) Olympics”, Hawks winger Kane said.
Team USA would flirt with production late in the third period, hitting at least three posts.
Tortorella was not made available to reporters on Wednesday. They’ll play one more game on Thursday that won’t matter before the players head back to their National Hockey League clubs. National Hockey League scoring champion Patrick Kane went goalless in both games.
“I played with Phil in Sochi, and I don’t want to speak for him, but I hope he wasn’t disrespecting anybody in our locker room, just like all the guys in our locker room don’t want to disrespect anyone outside of it”, Stepan said.
I guess that’s good for the Minnesota Wild, as they’ll have five of six world cup players back after missing only a few days of training camp because Team Finland met with a similar fate to Team USA. “We didn’t show up for him”.
The U.S. claimed the 1996 tournament, when it beat Canada three times – the only wins in 13 meetings over the history of the World Cup and its predecessor, the Canada Cup.
“There is definitely a fantastic future coming here”, Tortorella said Tuesday night. “There are some good young kids there that I think they’ll bring some juice to the program”. Most thought this game would be much closer in scoring and going into the semi-finals.
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“We’re happy we won”, forward Mark Scheifele said. “You ask yourself, ‘Could we have played harder with the bronze medal on the line?’ Even with the disappointment of the night before”. “I don’t care. We’re here and we played hard”.
