Team USA dropped their third and final game of the tournament to the Czech Republic, 4-3, on Thursday night, and underperformed in a big way with just a handful of goals scored while going winless in all three games.
Advertisement
John-Michael Liles, an IN native, started his hockey career as one of the first players produced by the US National Development Program, and has donned the Red, White and Blues for both Olympic competition and world championships during his hockey career.
While the hockey world fell for Connor McDavid, Nathan MacKinnon, and North American young guns team, and we all would have liked to see the ride continue, Canada against Russian Federation is a fine consolation prize. He would have arguably been their best player.
It’s impossible to dress up or to make excuses for.
Tarasenko finished off a give-and-go with Ovechkin for his second goal of the tournament at 3:42 of the second period.
The Americans didn’t have much time to sulk however as they were on the PP within seconds thanks to a penalty by Hemsky.
It made no difference to Team Canada.
This failure brought much criticism upon Team USA general manager Dean Lombardi and his selection process. The way they structured lines did nothing to generate the offense necessary for success.
“It feels like because they didn’t believe in the roster we have here they were waiting for this to happen and then they were going to pounce”. They endured a 7-3 pounding from Team Canada in the quarter-finals of the Vancouver Olympics and flamed out at the same point of the 2014 Games on home ice in Sochi.
USA players promised they wouldn’t mail it in with nothing to play for. It’s nice to have that; it’s good to have that experience with guys and the belief you can play different kind of games and overcome things. But that still didn’t matter, which is even more troubling about this team’s roster construction. “It was just a couple unfortunate bounces”.
Ben Bishop #30 of Team USA keeps his eyes on the puck during the first period against Team Czech Republic at the World Cup of Hockey tournament at the Air Canada Centre on September 22, 2016 in Toronto. In total, the Americans held a lead for 89 seconds in three games.
The Russian squad began the first period of the match at the packed Air Canada Center in strong control of the puck going on numerous offensives against the Finnish goal, but their opponents managed to find the tempo and evened the game.
Tortorella is among the most polarizing people in hockey, and his willingness to speak his mind is one reason. Own-goals are pretty much the worst, but given the fragile state of Team USA, I imagine that this was a kick in the groin. That will stand out from this tournament. The Devils’ Cory Schneider played the third period and saved all seven shots he faced.
“We went into Gillette Stadium and got smoked”.
I don’t know about you, but I never caught myself praising the coaching job McLellan was doing behind the bench. He’s at.925 for his career. You want good results, we didn’t get them. “And their goalie was good”. Either way there’s not much excuse for Team USA dropping all three games while finishing dead least in an worldwide tournament like the World Cup of Hockey.
I already spent a few thousand words on trying to examine what went wrong for this team and what needs to be fixed, but that was before things went from disastrous to full-on nuclear meltdown levels.
That went unsaid Thursday, but the numbers speak for themselves.
They didn’t get it.
Development is not necessarily the problem as there have been wheels in motion on that front for years. Team Russia is moving on and Team North America is eliminated.
It all comes down to how these teams are built.
So this week’s Friday Fan Poll asks, Who will win the World Cup of Hockey?
“For us, we play against Canada nearly every time”. If we don’t get to where we want to get, we’ll be in the same boat. When they consistently fall short on the biggest stage, and appear to be backsliding, it’s a huge problem. Nothing has been decided, and several conversations between the National Hockey League and NHLPA and participating federations will have to take place, but that’s the sense, as my colleague Pierre LeBrun noted Tuesday on SportsCentre’s Insider Trading.
Advertisement
“Again, it’s going to be tough”.
