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Youth served at worlds

Canada’s roster in Prague may have been young in years but not in experience

Wendy Graves
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June 10, 2015
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It wasn’t looking good for Canada’s National Men’s Team. Twenty minutes into its preliminary game against Sweden at the 2015 IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship, the Canadians were being outshot 14-5 and found themselves facing a 3-0 deficit.

Needing a jolt – not to mention a goal – Canada got both from 19-year-old Aaron Ekblad. Early in the second period, the team’s youngest player – who two games earlier became the youngest defenceman to ever score for Canada – fired home a loose puck through traffic to get his country on the board. Over the final 40 minutes Canada outshot its Scandinavian rival 34-18 and outscored it 6-1. Tyler Ennis, who had the game-winner, was the oldest of the six goal-scorers.

He’s 25.

“I’m not sure when we started [putting the team together] that we were thinking about age,” says Scott Salmond, Hockey Canada’s vice-president of hockey operations and national teams. “We were just thinking about taking the best players and fortunately when you look forward in our program we got a lot of good young players.”

Head coach Todd McLellan agrees that age was never a consideration.

“We just knew that these players were very capable of playing at a high level,” he says. “Most of the players were leaders and offensive leaders on their teams, and we had to put the group together so that the whole was more important than the parts.”

Veteran presence was added in the form of Jason Spezza, Brent Burns, Dan Hamhuis and Mike Smith.

“They had a big role in settling the team down when it needed it,” says McLellan. They also served as key decision-makers for the team, he adds, having a voice on things like workload and days off. “We wanted to have them participate in the direction of the team.”

While the core of the team ended up being chronologically young – 16 of the 23 players were 25 or younger – it was far from inexperienced. Cumulatively the core had won medals at the IIHF World Junior Championship (10), Memorial of Ivan Hlinka tournament (11 – all gold), World Under-17 Hockey Challenge (seven), IIHF Ice Hockey U18 World Championship (four) and Olympic Winter Games (one), not to mention a Spengler Cup (Matt Duchene and Tyler Seguin).

That Program of Excellence experience played a key role in preparing them for the big stage in Prague. It also may have provided a little extra motivation.

“Interestingly enough there’s a lot of guys who’ve been through the program who didn’t win,” says Salmond. Many players had international experience and knew the expectations that came with wearing the maple leaf, but recent gold medal droughts at the World Juniors and world championship had left them wanting more.

“From the day we got that team together there was a feeling from the players that they wanted to get it done,” says Salmond. “I thought as much as anything that was motivation for our players, guys who’d been disappointed before at the World Juniors, guys who’d been to the world championship and lost and being we’re not going to let that happen this time.”

The IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship is a major event in Europe, with nearly 160 individual broadcasters and more than one billion viewers. “It’s a huge stage. The players understand what that’s all about and they want to win,” says Salmond. “At the end of the day they’ve got the experience through the NHL or our programs to do that.”

The younger players also had veteran leaders to rely on. “What they were able to capture from those veterans is that experience of being in the tournament,” says McLellan. “How it’s supposed to feel now, what happens next, when does it get tough, when does it get easy.”

A big part of the experience of the world championship is helping players become better, says Salmond, and that comes from being around those who’ve been there before, those who’ve had success there (Burns, Hamhuis and Spezza have six medals between them) and those who’ve had long NHL careers.

“The reason the [younger] guys are good players is because they’re smart,” says Salmond, “and smart players will gain as much knowledge and experience as they can from the players around them.” Many of them, even though they’re only 23 or 24 years old, are leaders on their NHL teams; however, says Salmond, “this time, I think they kind of turned themselves over to our older leadership group and looked for direction from them.”

Spezza and Burns were named Top Forward and Top Defenceman, respectively, by the IIHF Directorate, but their younger teammates also made their mark in Prague.

Taylor Hall joined Spezza and Burns on the media all-star team. Ryan O’Reilly and Duchene were among the tournament leaders in the face-off circle, each winning two-thirds of their draws. Sean Couturier finished plus-13 and was never on the ice for an even strength goal against. Seguin and Hall ended up first and third in goals scored. Ennis showed off skill and speed on a wraparound that proved to be the gold-medal-winning goal versus Russia. And Jordan Eberle, Hall and Duchene were second, third and fifth among the tournament scoring leaders.

“We’ve gone through the Gretzky-Lemieux era and the Sakic-Blake-Iginla era,” says McLellan. “When I look at this group I think this is the next generation of Canadian teams.”

This year’s Team Canada finished 10-0 at the world championship, winning every game in regulation. It was the third gold medal won by a men’s team on the international stage this season. Between worlds, the World Juniors, U18 Ivan Hlinka Memorial Cup and IIHF Ice Hockey U18 World Championship, Canada went 28-1.

The future of Canadian hockey is bright thanks to its young stars.

“Not that long ago people were questioning Canadian hockey and were we developing talented players and were we skilled enough,” says Salmond. “I think we’ve answered those questions this year.”

For more information:

Esther Madziya
Manager, Communications
Hockey Canada

(403) 284-6484 

[email protected] 

Spencer Sharkey
Manager, Communications
Hockey Canada

(403) 777-4567

[email protected]

Jeremy Knight
Manager, Corporate Communications
Hockey Canada

(647) 251-9738

[email protected]

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