IIHF World ChampionshipDiscuss International Tournaments like the WJC, Olympics, and World Cup, as they take place, or discuss past tournaments. performances.
At the WJC's? Yes, unless there are drastic changes both in Canada and elsewhere.
The number of kids playing the game and the investment levels will make sure of that. Translating that to winning the tournament consistently is a different story, and it obviously doesn't automatically translate to the best full national team either.
When global warming causes the last of the ice caps to melt in 2025 and it becomes to expensive to create ice China will become the new world power in hoverhockey as early as 2028.
I've never seen so many people, both in interviews and on these boards, go out of their way to remove blame from a player for such an average performance at the WJC.
IMO, Subban got too much praise for making a big save and not enough grief for letting in a "soft" goal.
This says nothing about his future to me though as I think he has a lot of developIng to do before he's an NHLer. I just found all of the Subban defenders a little weird...especially since the three medal teams have all had stellar goaltending throughout the tournament.
Yes. We have the best players in virtually every tournament we play in. The problem is that those individual players don't always mesh together well to form a team.
Seventeen years is not enough time to change the current numbers enough for this to happen, even if Canada did finish out of medals at the WJC. The biggest issue will be Canada getting ethnic minorities into hockey in large numbers more than what other countries do.
It would have been worse, as this team without Nugent-Hopkins, Huberdeau, and possibly Scheifele and Strome would be the weakest forward group Canada has ever sent. Hamilton clearly would not be greatly missed on the back end. Their mentality may have been improved by facing some scrutiny heading in, but with Spott I doubt they succeed.
Worst case is they lose the Slovakian game and the American and Russian games and face relegation. If they still beat Slovakia, they would play the Czechs in the quarters and it would likely be a tough game.
