Canada trying to find positives
VANCOUVER— A devastating quarterfinal loss at the world junior hockey championship must act as motivation for the members of Team Canada, says the squad’s captain.
“We’ve got to move forward,” Maxime Comtois, the only returning member from last year’s gold medal-winning group, said after a 2-1 overtime loss to Finland on Wednesday.
“This is going to help us in the long run as individuals. We’ve got to take it as a man and move forward.”
This year’s players gave everything they had, Comtois said.
Coach Tim Hunter agreed, saying the players went hard the entire game against Finland.
“We played a great game start to finish. And it just didn’t work out,” he said.
As a result, Canada will not receive a medal for the second time in four years. But it’s just the second time in 21years Canada will not play for a medal.
Hunter was an assistant with the team last year and moved to bench boss ahead of this tournament. There were differences between the roles, he said.
“Just the challenge of getting 20-plus guys to buy into a system, to buy into a mindset and become a family — which we did all of those — and to play well, to compete for our country in a short period of time,” he said.
Canada started the tournament strong, notching a 14-0 win against Denmark in a Boxing Day blowout.
But the offence lapsed after that, with the team putting up just 10 goals over the next four games. Half of those goals came in a 5-1 win against the Czech Republic.
Canada capitalized on just three of 18 power plays, which ranked eighth in the 10-team tournament.
Hunter wasn’t ready to analyze what could have been done differently after Wednesday’s loss.
“I’m not going to put blame or talk about what went right or what went wrong,” he said. “It’s over. I’m going to go relax.”
Six players on this year’s team are eligible to return for next year’s tournament in the Czech Republic — forwards Alexis Lafreniere, Joe Veleno and Barrett Hayton and defencemen Ty Smith, Noah Dobson and Jared McIsaac.
“We always want to win,” said Comtois, an Anaheim Ducks prospect. “Now they’re going to have the feeling of losing. They don’t want to repeat that next year, so they’re going to know what it feels like and I think they’re going to be ready to attack every game next year.”
Canadian defenceman Evan Bouchard said there were positives.
“The chemistry that we created, the friendships that we created. There are memories here, friends here that I think are going to last a long time,” said Bouchard, an Edmonton Oilers prospect who plays for the OHL’s London Knights.