Moving parts not for show
Give the people what they want. At least that’s what it looked like Todd McLellan was doing when he juggled his forward lines during practice on Friday. A day after rolling past Europe in a one- sided 4- 0 win, North America’s head coach went back to the drawing board and started moving t he chess pieces around.
Apparently, four goals were not enough. Or maybe McLellan j ust wanted to see the reaction on Twitter when he put Connor McDavid on a line with Jack Eichel and Johnny Gaudreau, and then reunited junior teammates Nathan MacKinnon and Jonathan Drouin on a line with Ryan Nugent-Hopkins.
Even the players were gobsmacked by line combinations that looked like they were taken straight out of a video game.
“If it’s us three, then perfect,” said McDavid, who had been playing on a line with Drouin and Mark Scheifele. “Who better than to play with than those two?”
“People say we’re the future of the league or whatever, but it’s nice to play with these guys,” Eichel, who had been playing with Gaudreau and Brandon Saad, said of McDavid. “You might never be able to do it again.”
McLellan wasn’t trying to blow up Twitter with his line combinations. He was just trying to get this to another level. As good a game as North America played against Europe, they have to be a lot better if they are going to do any serious damage in the tournament.
“I still believe that the world is watching this team because there are so many young, tremendous players. They want to know the combinations and they’re aware of it,” said McLellan. “Some would say, ‘ why are you dismantling a group of lines that had a 4- 0 win?’ Our answer would be, we’ve got to find out if there’s better combinations before the tournament starts.
“When we went back and re- evaluated the game and watched it, we looked at a number of different areas, we think we can be better. We didn’t reach our ceiling last night.”
McLellan is r i ght to be a bit unhappy with Thursday’s result. Though MacKinnon scored twice and the North Americans easily won the game, their opponent was jet- lagged, out- of- sync and still finding their legs. About 10 of Europe’s players had been together at practice on Monday. The rest had been playing in an Olympic qualifier overseas.
Europe will be better the next time these two teams play again on Sunday. Even so, we’re talking about a team considered to be one of the weaker participants in the tournament. North America, which also plays an exhibition game against Czech Republic next week, won’t face real competition until the tournament starts and they are thrown into a Group of Death with Finland, Russia and Sweden.
“Well, we have to take it a day at a time,” said McLellan. “Again, the message to our group last night was mission accomplished, we won Game 1, but the ceiling, there’s a lot that we have to close on and we have to perform better. When you look at the way the European team played, they got better as the night went on. Their veteran savvy, their legs came out a little bit more, they controlled some play against us, and we know we’re going to get that from the three round- robin games we’re going to play.
“We’re not winning or advancing with any type of ‘ B’ game performances from any of our players. For us to have success, we’re going to have to be at the top of our game.”
That starts with finding forward line combinations that can do damage every time they are on the ice. And boy oh boy, these new lines have the potential to be something special.
McDavid playing with Eichel and Gaudreau is sort of like if Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin were put on a line together with Patrick Kane riding shotgun.
And MacKinnon a nd Drouin, who used to combine for 10- goal weekends when they won a Memorial Cup in Halifax, now have Nugent- Hopkins to play with.
We’ l l see if it actually works or if McLellan goes back to the drawing board again.
WE’RE NOT WINNING OR ADVANCING WITH ANY TYPE OF ‘B’ GAME (OUTINGS).