The post mortem is already underway.
And if you’re an Erie Otters fan, you already have a sense that there’s going to be pain as that OHL team sits in fourth place in the Western Division, with three teams nipping at their heels, and their best defenceman, Matthew Schaeffer, out for the next 3-4 months with a broken collarbone.
Schaeffer is but one aspect of the bad news that’s been the 2024-25 version of the Canadian entry to the World Juniors Championships, held this year on home ice in Ottawa, Ontario.
To say the knives are out is a bit of an understatement.
For the second consecutive year, powerhouse Canada is on the outside looking in, with no medals forthcoming for this year’s group.
About that group.
Like all teams, competitive ones anyways, there was a selection process to determine who was going to have the honour of wearing the red and white. Somehow, as part of that process, players like Michael Misa and Zayne Parekh of the defending Memorial Cup champions Saginaw Spirit didn’t make the cut, nor did Beckett Sennecke of the Oshawa Generals. Neither did Andrew Cristall, Carter Yakemchuk, or Michael Hage from the WHL or NCAA respectfully. That’s a good team that cuts guys like that, a bunch of already first-rounders and a sure-fire future one. Whoever making the cuts had a lot of, well, you know.
It’s the age-old question. Do you build a team on reputation? Merit? Perceived roles within the group? Whatever the operational criteria in this case, this team didn’t deliver. Not even close.
How many different vectors of criticism are there for this team? It seems plenty to go around.
First, discipline. This is a team that took no less than eleven minors against the arch-rival Americans, and it killed them. It’s a team that gave up a power play goal to Czechia with 40 seconds left in the third period to be eliminated from medal possibilities. It’s a team that challenged a call, lost the challenge, received a bench-minor as a result, and was then scored upon. The coach, Dave Cameron, was asked about this. He said he thought the team was taking too many penalties, and that it was on the players to wise-up to the repercussions of that.
It was a yappy team, one quick to sound-off to opponents and officials both. Chirping and hockey go together like Christmas and turkey, but whining and hockey is never a good mix, and this team seemed to have a lot to say but not a corresponding lot to offer. And they paid for it. In front of their own fans. Not the best showing.
It’s a team that didn’t practice after losses to the Latvians and Americans, or before the loss to Czechia. That’s a ballsy coaching decision right there, especially in retrospect when you lose. Cameron says they needed the time off. He said something to the effect that you can’t fix fatigue. Nobody asked him who picked the tired team.
To this last point, is this an indictment of how we do hockey in North America? Is the grind of major-junior hockey too much for these young players? Are we chasing the money too much? I mean, maybe we are if we’re talking about a two-week tournament in the middle of a regular season. But Michael Hage plays in Michigan in the NCAA, where they play between 25-35 games a year depending on the success of the program. They’re halfway through the season. Hage should be rested. Maybe they should have brought him along.
When has the grind of a regular season been an issue before? The same circumstances existed in years past, back in the days when Canada won every year, or lost narrowly in the title game. What insulated those players from those squads against the ravages of fatigue? Maybe it was the time they spent in the gym, or the scarcity of it compared to today’s players who are going non-stop between games, practice, and conditioning. In fact, conditioning has almost become the sport itself, since if you’re going to make it in the big leagues, you’ve got to have Connor Bedard legs. So I can kind of see the fatigue point.
I’m not going to suggest the boys on the roster were a bunch of slugs, because they’re not and they weren’t. They’re all proud Canadians, who wore the jersey and were proud to do so. Many, if not all, were devastated by the result.
That said, taking a pass on an exceptional player like Michael Misa opens you up to a lot of criticism if things don’t go your way. And things didn’t go their way. So along the tracks chugs the train of criticism.
Hockey Canada, never at a loss to find a new way to sport a black eye, will be looking for the proverbial scapegoat, the sacrificial lamb, the guy to throw off the cliff. That will be Cameron to start, he of no practices, failed challenges, poor roster construction, and few answers.
The purge may extend to a level or two above Cameron this time, especially given the absolutely brutal public relations nightmares this organization seems to embrace. There will likely be a small pile of bodies at the base of that cliff.
So, for this year anyway, it’ll be the winner of Finland and Sweden — always an awesome game — against the winner of USA and Czechia for the gold medal, something we’ll know the results of later today.
As to the Maple Leaf flying from a podium? We’ll have to wait until next year at this time, in Minneapolis-St. Paul, to see if that will happen.
In the meantime, there’s going to be a lot of soul-searching in Canadian hockey.
NEWSMAGRENFREW 