Junior team cuts are going to be brutal
It's going to be a raw deal.
It's built-in to be a rotten hand. The 14-day quarantine that ends Tuesday morning at the Team Canada training camp in Red Deer could result in a significant percentage of the 46 players involved getting cut mere minutes after they get out of solitary confinement, without even seeing the ice again.
And most of the other cuts figure to be made not long after.
Yes, the cuts are going to be a brutal business as a result of the two players testing positive for COVID-19 and the quarantine that resulted.
Most of the players who will be cut came to the selection camp segment of the Team Canada training camp knowing that to make the roster, they were going to have to knock the socks off the coaching staff of this very deep team headed to the world junior championships in Edmonton.
But they haven't really had a chance to do that. The quarantine has taken most of their opportunities away.
Most of them had two chances of being in the lineup on Boxing Day in Rogers Place against Germany — play great in the training camp games or have somebody get hurt. And how many players are going to get injured while locked in their hotel rooms for two weeks?
You have to figure about a dozen of these guys already realize they're the Team Canada version of dead men walking.
For them, the only question is, when will it happen?
“I would feel horribly about releasing a player coming out of quarantine. But knowing that we did not have any choice but to have all the players in quarantine at the time of a positive test, we could not send anyone home prior to Dec. 8,” said Hockey Canada's vice-president of hockey operations Scott Salmond, essentially the general manager of this team. “I can tell you that we have not determined our plan when to release players and we are considering all options to be fair to all players while balancing team selection and preparation.”
It would seem to be cruel and unusual punishment to tell them all 10 minutes after the quarantine is over Tuesday morning that it's time to go home.
But Dec. 8 was when they planned on getting down to the tournament team they will take to Edmonton.
It's definitely not going to be normal.
“Is there anything normal? I don't know anymore what is normal,” head coach Andre Tourigny said. “We don't know yet what the next day will bring, but we will likely be able to have another look at some players. At some point, we'll have to make decisions.
“One thing I know is that all these guys are highly competitive. All these guys believe in themselves. I'm not that sure that many guys are thinking that they're out. Some of them probably know there's a slim chance. But we would love to have another look at them when we get out of the quarantine.
“We get out next Tuesday. I don't know if we'll have to cut players then or if we'll be able to carry a certain amount of players. But as coach, I would love to have another look at a lot of those guys.
“We have guys who haven't even been able to show us what they've got at all,” he said of quarantined NCAA players and others who were late arrivals because of positive tests before they got here. “So, we'd love to have a look at those guys for sure.
“Even the guys who were here since the beginning hadn't played for seven or eight months. Then they had four days of practice and two intrasquad games.
“But let's be honest, we're going to have to look at what they've done in the past more than what they've done in our camp. We have to look at how good they can be a month from now,” he said.
Keeping a close eye on all of this is Ryan Hamilton, the University of New Brunswick professor who spent 65 days in an NHL playoff bubble and won a Stanley Cup ring with the Tampa Bay Lightning managing their psychological environment. It has also been his job with Hockey Canada for several seasons.
“The thing with these players is that this is a thing that they really, really wanted, that they were prepared to give their heart and soul for and now they don't even know if they'll even get the chance to do that,” said Hamilton. “My advice to those players and my mindset when I'm on a call to those players is that you have to treat this process as if you're going to be on the team, because if you stay engaged, keep working on your body the best you can, stay healthy, work on mental skills and pay attention in videos, you are acquiring skills.
“And, you know what, if it turns out you don't end up on the roster, you can feel like you were engaged with it and did everything you could and ended up profiting from the experience.”